Plan Document and FAQ for the Faculty, Staff, and Students

The Planning Committee sent a plan document and FAQ to the Earlham faculty, staff, and students on September 3. Sections of the 15-page document include:

* The Ten-Year Strategy
* Academic Excellence
* Academic Mentoring
* Immersion Experiences
* Beyond Earlham
* Operational Initiatives
* Operational Support

The plan document will be first discussed by the faculty on September 5, with other faculty meetings to follow. Meanwhile, preparations are underway for conversations with students and staff over the next few weeks.

For the Planning Committee,
Neal Baker

Progress Report for the Board of Trustees

The Planning Committee sent a progress report to the Earlham Board of Trustees in May. Sections of the 44-page document include:

* What must be true about Earlham, “The Givens”
* Commitments that are “Necessary, But Not Sufficient”
* Model of a Bold, Distinctive, and Compelling Earlham College Education
* Foreseen Obstacles
* External Threats
* The Planning Process

This progress report was discussed by the Board and Planning Committee members on June 1, with an eye to next steps. Based on feedback from Board members and College President, David Dawson, the committee will now focus the plan and begin to prioritize strategic action items. We anticipate working throughout the summer on the development of a strategic timeline with associated costs and accountability metrics. 

For the Planning Committee,

Neal Baker

Planning Committee Takes Flight: Four Preliminary Models

March was a busy month of consultation and sub-group work for the College Planning Committee. The Committee distributed 4 preliminary models to the community for review and met with students, faculty, staff, alumni and candidates for some of the new campus positions. As a result the committee developed a fifth model that we have spent the past two weeks adding plumage to. Through this process the committee has focused on a few issues, namely the academic calendar, affordability, size of the institution and college governance processes. The Committee hopes to have some much more detailed plans to provide to the community for discussion by the end of the semester, with the anticipation of work continuing throughout the summer.

For the Planning Committee,

Kumar Jensen

Planning Committee Update: Discussion of Possible Plans

The College Planning Committee recently distributed a document, “The Extremely Preliminary, by No Means
Final, Offered Purely for Discussion, Tentative First Draft of Possible Plans.” The committee solicited feedback on the document at Faculty Meeting in late February and expects to be on the agenda again in early March. Separate meetings were held with Student Senate and hourly staff. Earlier today, the document was sent to Earlham alumni. Responses continue to arrive via email and Facebook.

For the Planning Committee, Neal Baker

Time to Pivot: An Update Following Convocation

The College Planning Committee met on Jan. 25. Those present shared excitement for the big turnout for last week’s convocation on planning. There was agreement that interest was high, but that people on campus especially now want to move from information gathering to seeing and hearing concrete proposals.

The committee is now ready to pivot in just that direction, now that the formal deadline for comments is past. It has divided itself into five subgroups: curriculum and academics, student life, cocurriculum, finance and budget, and data analysis. Each of these embraces a wide variety of subjects. We have heard from close to 150 faculty, students, staff, and alumni, who have contributed close to 1,000 different ideas and proposals.

 

For the Planning Committee, Tom Hamm

Update leading up to Convocation Jan. 18th

Available members of the Planning Committee met over winter break on three occasions. Among them, a four-hour retreat (1/10/2012) included a conversation with College President David Dawson about his thoughts on planning progress to date. We’ve organized ourselves into four subcommittees — Curriculum/Academic/Scholarly Work, Curricular, Student Life, and Finance/Budget. These subcommittees will review feedback and begin to elaborate aspects of a vision for Earlham. At the same time, the Planning Committee is busily preparing for its January 18th Convocation on the status of the planning process and the higher education context within which it occurs.

We continue to solicit your bold, distinctive, and compelling ideas for Earlham and look forward to your input.

For the Planning Committee, Neal Baker

Committee Update: Keeping you informed

The Planning Committee met yesterday (12/12/2011) as we have on Mondays since the end of September. We focused our attention mainly on preparation for the January 18 Convocation which will be a presentation to the Earlham Community about Earlham’s strategic planning process and where we are in it. The convo will include information about what we can learn from Earlham’s previous strategic plans, external trends and research we need to be aware of, and at least a few ideas that hold promise for a thriving and vibrant Earlham. 

 We also continued our discussion of information gathered during  consultations with various groups on-campus. In the past week, members of the Committee met with: Fine Arts faculty, Humanities faculty, All Staff Meeting, and Social Science faculty. Previously, we met with Student Senate, College Conference (administrative faculty), and Science Division faculty. More consultation sessions are planned during and following the holiday break. Our next meeting is with administrative faculty on Wednesday (12/14/2011).

 We reviewed and approved the Committee’s new presence on the College website, blog, Facebook, and Moodle. We invite you to follow and contribute to the planning process through these resources, or by contacting any of us directly. 

 What bold, distinctive, and compelling ideas do you have for Earlham?

As always, members of the Committee are eager to hear your thoughts.

For the Planning Committee, Ray Ontko

Bold, Distinctive, and Compelling Ideas Drive the Planning Process

The Planning Committee wants to keep you informed about our progress and discussions. We hope that in the coming months you will astound us with the brilliance of your ideas about the future of Earlham. As a committee, however, we don’t want to surprise you with what we do. Thus you will receive regular updates from us. To facilitate that, we will post any information on this website, and we invite your responses!

The committee’s work to date has convinced us that the college cannot continue business as usual.  Our goal isn’t simply to balance the budget. Instead, we want to see a college with the resources it needs to flourish. President David Dawson detailed goals in his inaugural address that we all hope to embrace: a growing and diversifying applicant pool; admitting every year over three hundred students of equal or better quality than we admit today; retaining and helping equip every student who enrolls for a productive and rewarding career after Earlham; and a steady improvement in the college’s finances.

As we continue our work we will be posting some questions and information we think will productively frame the discussion.  We want you to tell us what else we need to consider, what other subjects need to be discussed, how we can have a discussion that will lay the foundations of a bold, compelling, and distinctive future for Earlham.

Tweaking, slight adjustments, just becoming a little louder in our message–those will not be enough. The moment is here when we need to be at our most imaginative and innovative.

-Earlham College Planning Committee