Drew University always had an Ivy League look. Drive through the gated entrance of the leafy, 186-acre Madison, N.J. campus and you’re soon confronted by Mead Hall, a massive Greek-revival mansion built in 1836, with its brick façade, white portico columns and green colonial window shutters. The rooms inside are just as stately, with 20-foot-high ceilings and large oil paintings of the founders and past presidents staring down at you. But the mood starts to change as you walk across the grand foyer and up a long staircase to the president’s office suite.

Once there, you will meet MaryAnn Baenninger, the 13th president of Drew, and her cabinet of executive officers. Dressed in a tasteful pantsuit and silk scarf, Dr. Baenninger may look like she belongs in an ivory tower, but hers is no stuffy academic administration. She and her team are change agents who have recently been recruited to turn around Drew, which had been hemorrhaging students and revenues.

And Drew’s discount rate–the percentage of tuition it rebates in the form of “aid” to attract students–recently hit an alarmingly high 69%. Despite that, freshman enrollment has fallen from a peak of 506 in 2009 to 302 in 2014, the year Baenninger arrived after righting the finances of the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn.