To: Wellesley Faculty and Staff
From: President Paula A. Johnson
Re: Building Our Roadmap to the Future: Strategic Planning Begins at Wellesley
Date: August 8, 2019
As we embark on a new academic year, we will also begin work on a project that will shape the College’s course in the years leading up to our sesquicentennial in 2025, and beyond: the development of a five-year strategic plan and long-term vision for Wellesley.
This is a time of tremendous challenge, change, and opportunity in higher education. To a degree that we have not experienced in our lifetimes, the value of a liberal arts education is being questioned. Fields of study are rapidly evolving. The ability of leading institutions not just to attract but to support a broad range of students is in doubt, and how best to prepare students as the nature of work evolves is uncertain.
At Wellesley, we have also faced the need to address the limitations of our financial resources while holding true to our aspirational mission, and maintaining our standing as an outstanding liberal arts college and the world’s leading women’s college. In my Commencement address of 2018, I named the need for “practical dreaming” as central to the College’s future. Now more than ever, it is important for us to think, in ways that are both expansive and grounded, about how our powerful mission and history can lead us to define strategies that preserve the best of Wellesley and also prepare us to move boldly into the future.
GOALS AND GUIDING QUESTIONS
Since Wellesley has not had a tradition of this kind of comprehensive strategic planning, we should be clear about what it will, and will not, do. It will allow us to consider all of our strengths and how they intersect to create a stronger Wellesley. Decisions made by one division within the College either impact or are impacted by other departments, not to mention the larger world. Through more comprehensive planning, we will set an overall vision and coordinate strategies that allow us to make better-informed decisions regarding our future, enabling the allocation of precious resources in ways that will have the greatest impact.
On the other hand, the plan will not answer the myriad of more localized questions that Wellesley will face in the next five years. It will not take the place of more in-depth planning and decision making within divisions of the College or in Academic Council. For example, it will not substitute for the deliberative process that will be called for if we are to rethink the College’s distribution requirements.
Thanks to so many of you, we have established a strong foundation for this critical undertaking. As part of our reaccreditation process, we completed an excellent self-study, which delved deeply into assessing our great strengths as well as our aspirations for change. We also worked together to clarify our fundamental values.
Now, we turn to the future to answer the questions that foundational work helped to articulate. These questions, which will be refined through community engagement, include:
- How do we fully realize our mission to provide an excellent liberal arts education to women who will make a difference in the world?
- How do we create an experience for students that instills a greater sense of belonging and connection and prepares them for a rapidly changing world?
- How do we elevate our role as a leader and advocate for women’s education and empowerment in the U.S. and globally?
- How does our organization, culture and governance need to evolve to achieve the “Wellesley of the future” we envision?
PLANNING PROCESS AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Developing a strategic plan is an ambitious project that requires a structured and transparent process, which enables active engagement by our community. We are kicking off the planning process now and will continue for the next 15 months with the goal of the Board of Trustees approving a plan by October 2020.
This process will be led by a Steering Committee, chaired by Provost Andrew Shennan and me, and will include members of senior leadership, the Board of Trustees, faculty, and staff. The Steering Committee will be responsible for identifying the key questions that will guide our work together and for overseeing the development of the strategic plan.
To explore and answer these questions, the Steering Committee will establish Work Groups that will include faculty, staff, and students. The Work Groups are where much of the work will be done—exploring the questions in depth, sharing recommendations, and drafting key aspects of the plan. This is where our students will be most actively engaged—both participating in the Work Groups, and in discussions around the recommendations, which will be presented in the spring of 2020.
Community engagement and transparent communications will be cornerstones of this effort. We will be engaging the community from the very start, and finding opportunities for discussion and feedback at each stage of the process. We also plan to launch a Strategic Planning section on the website this fall that will provide information and updates as we move forward.
The Steering Committee will be supported by a Core Group, which includes several members of senior leadership, and by CFAR, the strategic consulting firm we have engaged to facilitate the work. CFAR has deep experience helping other leading academic and mission-driven organizations with strategic planning, and we are pleased to have them as our partner.
I am excited to begin this critical exercise of practical dreaming with you. Together, we will develop a shared vision and path to the future that allows us to embrace change, while strengthening our leadership and advancing our mission.
