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Over the next 18 months, Smith will be actively
engaged in creating a strategic plan to focus our efforts over the next decade. Building
upon our core mission of providing an engaging and excellent liberal arts education
to women, the plan will reflect the distinctive characteristics and advantages of
the college. We begin our efforts from a position of strength, with a talented and
engaged student body, an excellent faculty, distinguished for their teaching and
research, dedicated staff, and extraordinary facilities. Our new plan will build
on the momentum of the last strategic plan and its related fund-raising campaign,
whose initiatives have propelled the college forward in recent years: the Brown Fine
Arts Center, the Campus Center, the Kahn Institute for the Liberal Arts, the Poetry
Center, the Center for Women and Financial Independence, Praxis, and, of course,
the Picker Engineering Program.
Why plan now? Faculty have been engaged in a careful
review of the curriculum for the past year, giving particular attention to the capacities
that we want all of our students to develop in their time here. I believe that complementing
these discussions with equally reflective reviews of other areas of student experience
and campus operations will produce a set of strong initiatives. The admission picture
for Smith and for other liberal arts colleges has become increasingly competitive
in recent years, as students broaden their choices. Responding to this trend requires
institutional reflection, focus, and reinvestment. The budget flexibility created
by recent financial planning efforts provides the foundation on which to undertake
a meaningful planning process. In addition, we will be able to integrate findings
from the Common Ground project into our deliberations. Finally, we have the opportunity
to integrate the college's 10-year re-accreditation, scheduled for 2007, with this
process.
The aim of our planning efforts is to identify the goals
and priorities most critical for the college over the next decade. I expect to complete
the planning process by the end of spring 2007. This spring, we will begin a review
of Smith's current strengths and challenges. This process will include opportunities
for faculty, staff, students, and alumnae to identify and comment on important issues
facing the college. By spring's end, my hope is that we can articulate six to eight
critical issues. Over the subsequent academic year, we will work to develop, analyze,
and prioritize specific initiatives for making progress in each of these critical
areas-an action plan for achieving our strategic vision. These initiatives will,
in turn, shape our fund raising goals.
I have already begun a set of conversations
with alumnae entitled "Shaping
the Future of Smith." In small gatherings, most often at alumnae homes, I ask
two questions: What in your view are the distinctive strengths of Smith that shape
the college's opportunities in the future? And, what are the capacities you feel
we should develop in all of our students in their time here? These conversations
have been vigorous and invigorating. Alumnae have spoken about the importance of
critical thinking, of public speaking, of quantitative reasoning, of science and
science literacy, of developing leadership, of the strength of the arts at Smith,
of study abroad and international education. In the spring semester, I will be extending
this conversation to the campus. Faculty, staff and students will have forums to
identify and discuss the priorities that they feel are most critical for the college
at this time.
The Committee on Mission and Priorities will serve as
the steering committee for the strategic planning process. While my preference is
to use the college's various standing committees to develop and review strategies
to respond to the critical issues emerging from this process, I may also appoint
special ad-hoc working groups to explore issues in greater detail, as needed. Early
next semester, we will announce dates and times for campus conversations about the
future of the college, as well as an interactive Web site that will foster dialogue
throughout the planning process. I look forward to your participation.
Carol T. Christ |
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