Former president Ann Caldwell reflects on spearheading the purchase of the Catherine Filene Shouse Building in the Charlestown Navy Yard 20 years ago, a move that stabilized the MGH Institute and has led to a campus that now encompasses seven properties.

It was January 2002, and Ann Caldwell couldn’t help but smile. 

Caldwell, halfway into what would be a decade-long tenure as president of the MGH Institute, had just pulled off something few people had believed possible. She was standing inside 36 1st Avenue in the Charlestown Navy Yard–the school’s first permanent home, 25 years after its founding. 
“Having our own building was a major milestone and set the Institute on a path for the growth and success that has occurred over the past 20 years,” recalled Caldwell of that moment. 

A secure future was anything but a given when she arrived in 1997. The school’s finances were teetering. Fewer than 500 students were enrolled in the nursing, physical therapy, and speech-language pathology programs, a very small number even for a specialty school. The Institute was housed on several floors in the office building at 101 Merrimac Street, near the old Boston Garden. 

Although an upgrade from the early days when classes were held at Ruth Sleeper and Bartlett halls at Massachusetts General Hospital, the location was full of challenges. The rent was over $1 million, an enormous financial drain. Each day, students spilled into the corridors, waiting for one class in a makeshift office to end, dodging their classmates and study carrels as well as the employees of adjacent businesses. The only meeting room was several floors up, near her office. Faculty and administrative staff were shoehorned into extremely tight spaces. 

“It was the strangest place I’d ever seen for an academic institution,” she said. “I know a lot of alumni from those days remember Merrimac Street fondly, but that environment was hardly conducive for the Institute to be a respected graduate school.” 

The Institute was the only degree-granting affiliate in the newly formed Partners HealthCare (the precursor to today’s Mass General Brigham). Some of the system’s leaders mandated that the Institute separate from the system and partner with another local university, thinking it no longer could operate independently. But there were reasons for optimism. The school had recently signed a comprehensive clinical affiliation agreement with Massachusetts General Hospital, with support from James Mongan, then MGH president, and Jeanette Ives Erickson, the hospital’s chief nurse and current chair of the IHP’s Board of Trustees, a big help for securing clinical placements. The school’s accreditation was renewed in 2000. And Caldwell and her team had stabilized the budget. 

Importantly, the Merrimac Street lease was coming up for renewal at the end of 2001. Caldwell proposed buying a building instead, using tax exempt financing to fund it. And she had a good idea for the ideal place. “The Navy Yard was not developed like it is today,” she recalled. “Partners had just a small footprint there and many of the buildings were empty. Not only was Building 36 perfect for what we needed, but the Navy Yard had a campus feel to it.” 

Mary Lentz of the real estate company McCall & Almy identified the old joiner’s building, where wooden ships were once built, as being available. With four floors and over 35,000 square feet, it would give the school both breathing room plus space for future expansion. Caldwell, who had been a fundraising officer at several area colleges before coming to the Institute, successfully landed a $2 million grant from the Catherine Filene Shouse Foundation and raised an additional $2.5 million to jumpstart the purchase. (The building is now named in honor of the philanthropist, who was a member of the family that owned the now-defunct Filene’s department store.) She then worked with Atlas Evans, the current vice president of finance and administration, who had just begun at the Institute, to secure a loan to finance the rest of the building’s cost and pay for a complete renovation. All told, the final price tag was $20 million—in retrospect, a small price to pay for ensuring the Institute’s future.

“On the day we dedicated the renovated building,” Caldwell said, “I had the rare privilege of giving tours to many of the school’s founders, like the family of John Hilton Knowles, to Charles Sanders, and Nancy Watts, who said, ‘For the first time, I really believe the Institute will survive.’” When Caldwell left the Institute in 2007, the enrollment had grown to 800, new academic programs were being launched, and the first online courses were underway. To recognize her efforts, the Institute bestowed upon her the title of President Emerita, awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, and created the annual Ann W. Caldwell President’s Lecture: Interprofessional Rounds. 

Twenty years later, Caldwell looks back with pride on what her leadership set in motion: a thriving graduate school with more than 1,700 students, a campus with 176,435 square feet of space across seven buildings, a robust and growing research initiative, several new direct-entry and post-professional programs, an alumni population that has more than tripled since she stepped down in 2007, and solid financial footing. 

“I’m like a proud parent, being able to see how the Institute has matured since I’ve left,” she said. “It’s a great feeling.”