We, as co-chairs of the four strategic planning working groups, are writing to provide an update and a current channel for engaging with strategic planning, should you wish to do so. We paused our work this spring in the wake of the pandemic and the transition to remote work and online teaching. This massive disruption brings a new set of lenses for reexamining our current state analyses and aspirations. Our five draft aspirations (included below) are shaped by what we gathered from the community engagement sessions this past spring. The work of crafting the aspirations, goals, and recommendations is far from complete, and we cannot do it without significant further engagement from the broader Wellesley community. We understand that conditions for community-wide engagement are suboptimal, to say the least. We also recognize that for some this is a time when you do want to provide feedback as you are taking stock of the changes happening across campus. So, while we anticipate providing some more structured opportunities for engagement in the fall, we also want to make clear that we are more than open to receiving feedback and concrete recommendations in the meantime. This Feedback Form will be open through at least early September. You should also feel free to email any one of us individually (cbate@wellesley.edu; mjeffrie@wellesley.edu; kjones@wellesley.edu; ekonkle@wellesley.edu; aprabhu@wellesley.edu; cramos@wellesley.edu; crothsch@wellesley.edu; hwoods@wellesley.edu).
Recapping the Spring
On February 18, President Johnson announced the beginning of Strategic Planning Phase 2: Our Aspirations. The announcement detailed three weeks of engagement, beginning February 20, that included a series of large and small meetings for community conversation. After these sessions we hoped “to be able to articulate a set of compelling aspirations that have been informed and validated by the community.”
We facilitated the sessions and made substantial progress on the aspirations with input from our working group members, whose research was crucial to the framing of our questions. Participation from many of you in these sessions prior to the March upheaval provided us with rich material to refine and expand. As Wellesley pivoted to remote instruction, we used the interruption as an opportunity to pause and reconsider both the current state reports and the group-specific aspirations. What emerged was a reaffirmation of the central elements of the current state reports and an agreement among us, the co-chairs, to collaborate more closely and integrate the work across the four working groups going forward.
Moving Forward
We are moving forward as carefully as possible. We will not move from one phase of the planning process to the next without engaging our multiconstituency working groups and the Wellesley community more broadly. As noted above, at the moment, it is impossible for everyone at Wellesley to be as involved in this process as they might like. Still, we welcome your thoughts about strategic planning whenever you are able to share them, be it this month, later in the summer, or once the academic year begins. Later this summer, we will provide additional information about structured opportunities for engagement during the academic year. At any time before that, we are happy to take thoughts, questions, or comments addressed to us as outlined above. We endeavor to maximize the transparency of the strategic planning process, and we are committed to being responsive to you.
Although we do not expect substantial engagement with us during this challenging summer, we did not want to delay sharing the draft aspirations we are refining. They are not the final product of the aspiration phase, which was anchored in our engagement with the community. We fully expect your input will contribute to getting us to that point.
The draft aspirations at this stage are:
Aspiration 1: Every Wellesley student will know the joy of intellectual engagement and discovery, develop both personal and civic senses of purpose, and strengthen their sense of belonging in this community, in curricular and co-curricular aspects of their Wellesley experiences.
Aspiration 2: Every Wellesley graduate will have a set of intellectual, interpersonal, and communications skills, a creative and flexible approach to problem solving, and a body of knowledge that will equip them to achieve their own goals and contribute to the social good.
Aspiration 3: The organization and governance structures of the College, rooted in the principles of shared governance, empower all members of our community to be collective stewards of the College’s mission.
Aspiration 4: We hold ourselves and each other accountable to building a community that is rooted in relational trust, equity, and social justice, where every individual feels a sense of belonging and agency.
Aspiration 5: Wellesley is a convenor of global networks and partnerships to intervene in the world to advance women’s education, gender equality, and the empowerment and equity of all; we model our global presence on Wellesley’s own enterprise of redefined excellence that is attuned to the needs of the world beyond our walls.
We realize these ideas are presented in broad terms, and you might wish to share more specific thoughts that are inspired by the draft aspirations. You may, for example, have concrete recommendations or strong opinions about how to develop a “civic sense of purpose” at the College, as stated in Aspiration 1. We welcome your responses, reactions, and suggestions, in whatever terms they occur to you, at any time, including right now, even though we have not yet reached the “recommendation” phase of the strategic planning process.
Guiding Principles
As we were refining these aspirations, we found it useful to identify principles that have guided our collaborative conversations as co-chairs of the working groups. Together, we generated these to guide our thinking and ensure there was cohesiveness to our ideas that had developed through somewhat separate processes in each of the working groups. They are, thus, not the culmination of any phase of the strategic planning process, nor are they guaranteed to appear in this form in the final strategic plan. Nevertheless, we wanted to share those with you as well.
The principles are:
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Equity and inclusive excellence for students, faculty, and staff is a core value for the Wellesley community. In particular, we must center the experiences of Black and Indigenous people and their histories, removing barriers and dismantling oppressive systems at Wellesley to foster a thriving campus community.
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The residential experience is central to a Wellesley education and lifelong belonging in the Wellesley community. Investments in our residential buildings provide a critical foundation for a safe, healthy, and flourishing community.
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Strong connections must exist between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. A moral grounding of all disciplines in the humanities and experience with multiple modes of understanding and recording our world are at the heart of a Wellesley education.
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Shared governance is a core value in College decision making. A collective understanding of shared governance, its implications, and effective practice are necessary components of accountability and equity in decision making.
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Wellesley exists to make a difference in the world. We make a difference as individuals taking action and as a community that stands up for its values around the globe.
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The long-term financial sustainability of the College is a central consideration in all decision making. Wellesley faces real tradeoffs and must be willing to make active choices to resolve them. We acknowledge that we cannot do everything and so will intentionally prioritize the strategic goals to best position Wellesley for future success.
We also have consensus among the eight co-chairs that Wellesley’s role in addressing the existential threat that the climate crisis poses to humanity should guide our thinking moving forward. The many lessons we are learning about our priorities, our vulnerabilities, and our strengths at this time of acute hardship and constraint for many must make their way into our thinking about the future.
We realize this is a lengthy communication, but we wanted to provide you with as much information as possible about our current thinking and the process going forward. We hope that if something in this message resonates strongly with you, you will reach out to us so that we continue to be in touch with the diversity, thoughtfulness, and creativity of our community.
Thank you for reading this far, and for all you do for Wellesley.
