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The College of Wooster
Wooster, Ohio

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The Strategic Plan

Wooster exists for the intellectual and personal development of its students. Therefore, strengthening the quality of the academic program is our primary objective for the College's advancement in the next five years. In the allocation of resources, we should focus on the extent to which these resources contribute to student development and to the academic community in which that development takes place.

Not all of our objectives for Wooster can be achieved at once or even within the next five years. We must direct our attention first to those aspects of the College which we believe will have greatest impact on our primary objective of improving the quality of the academic program. The individual objectives, goals, and strategies contained in this Plan have been identified as particularly relevant to the needs of students as we enter the 21st Century.

The Academic Program:
Curriculum

Wooster's curriculum has many strengths and distinctive features, from First Year Seminar and the Independent Study program to an expectation that students will acquire a breadth of knowledge and an understanding of inquiry across the major fields of intellectual endeavor. As new fields of knowledge are defined, it is increasingly important that students learn how knowledge is derived in these as well as traditional fields and how all fields are interrelated. It is likewise important that students have the opportunity to develop the skills necessary for the critical formulation, evaluation, and expression of ideas. The development of this knowledge and these skills is essential preparation not only for independent study but also for a lifetime of independent learning, thinking, and decision-making in a complex and diverse society and a rapidly changing world.

Objective: To strengthen the coherence of the curriculum

To adopt new general education requirements based on the knowledge, understanding, and skills that all students graduating from Wooster should possess.
To raise the standard of student writing in particular.
To increase opportunities for interdisciplinary work which explores and demonstrates connections among curricular areas.

Independent Study

The Independent Study program is the most distinctive aspect of Wooster's curriculum and is essential to the College's identity. Independent Study is such an integral part of the College's culture that it cannot be easily imitated by competing institutions. It is essential that both internal and external constituencies of the College understand the nature of the program and its benefits for students, faculty, and the institution. Independent Study is more than a capstone course; it is a coherent program of study that begins in the student's first year, continues through the sophomore and junior years, culminates with the senior-year experience, and shapes the entire Wooster curriculum.

Objective: To renew allegiance to Independent Study as a particularly effective mode of instruction and identify ways to strengthen it, to integrate and articulate it within the curriculum, and to make it better known.

To ensure across departments more effective and consistent preparation of students for Senior Independent Study.
To raise the visibility of the Independent Study program both on campus and off.
To re-interpret Independent Study both internally and to external audiences, articulating the coherence and purposefulness of this broad educational experience.

The Academic Community

An effective academic community must offer to its members an environment in which all are challenged to see the world from many points of view. This ability to deal with difference, particularly among people and ideas, is an integral part of students' intellectual development and should be part of the learning experience in college. Among the greatest challenges which we as a nation face are the diversity of American society and the complexity of the global environment, and to be leaders our graduates must be prepared to meet these challenges.

Objective: To provide an academic community which enables all students to acquire the knowledge, experience, and tools necessary for responsible citizenship in a diverse and global society

To increase from 8% to 12% by 2003 the percentage of American students from under-represented groups entering the College. The experience of similar colleges and the demography of Wooster's primary areas suggests goals of 6% African American students and 6% Asian-American, Hispanic, and Native American students combined.
To have at least 7% international students and to seek greater balance among continents and countries represented.
To increase the number of persons from under-represented groups on the faculty and staff across the College during the next five years.
To devote greater and more consistent attention to diversity across the curriculum.
To develop and strengthen special academic programs in such areas as service learning, internships and practica, and the many aspects of international education.

Faculty

The faculty are the heart of the academic program, and the College can thrive only when persons of intellectual strength and good will choose to make teaching at Wooster their life's work. Our commitment to excellence in teaching implies a commitment to small classes--an expensive proposition in terms of time and teaching load--and to excellent faculty. Moreover, the centrality of Independent Study in Wooster's mission requires that each faculty member be actively engaged in a discipline and demonstrate this engagement in scholarship of high quality. The objective and goals for the faculty stem from the belief that support for faculty as both teachers and scholars is an essential long-term investment.

Objective: To ensure the excellence of the faculty by supporting both teaching and scholarship, by affirming their essential interconnection, and by assisting faculty to gain national visibility in their disciplines as teacher-scholars.

To establish faculty salaries in each academic rank in the top half of the institutions in the Great Lakes College Association.
To clarify expectations regarding teaching load, scholarship, and other responsibilities.
To develop and support excellence in scholarship and research among the faculty.
To encourage faculty to seek external grant funding as a replacement for College resources and provide support to faculty for obtaining individual research grants.
To encourage and support more faculty participation in national disciplinary and higher education activities.

Campus And Community Life

As a residential college, Wooster recognizes that student learning extends beyond the classroom to the campus community as a whole. We believe that a healthy academic community fosters a high level of interaction among students, faculty, and staff, characterized by participation, fairness, and communication. Wooster is a strong community. To maintain and enhance this strength we seek to encourage the informal interactions necessary for the personal and academic growth of students and for the cohesion of the entire campus community. Students especially appreciate the participation of faculty and staff in student activities in the evenings and on weekends. Time and attractive spaces are essential to this informal interaction.

In recent years, there has been a renewal of campus discussion on the importance of ethnic and global diversity to the sense of community at the College, and these discussions have had a positive effect in bringing together groups which otherwise might not associate frequently. More frequent interaction can assist the College in meeting the ongoing challenge to bring about campus unity amidst pluralism.

Objective: To increase campus interaction among students, faculty, and staff.

To achieve configurations in building renovation and construction that will encourage interaction outside the classroom.
To increase opportunities for student-faculty interaction involving thoughtful and critical discussion of ideas outside of the classroom.
To provide opportunities for "all-campus" gatherings and for "family-friendly" gatherings which encourage members of the community, especially faculty and staff members and their families, to interact.
To provide an environment supporting greater faculty intellectual interchange and participation in campus life.

Objective: To recognize the contributions of all groups of employees, particularly respecting hourly and support staff as full members of the community.

To establish salaries and wages for administrative and support staff in the upper half of GLCA colleges or other comparable employers, based on the appropriate national, regional, or local labor market conditions for each employment sector.
To provide increased opportunities for professional development.
To offer comparable benefits across employee categories, subject to limitations by law.
To improve the work environment for hourly and support staff.

Outreach To The Wooster Community

Strengthening the campus community should also include strengthening connections to the wider Wooster community. The City of Wooster and Wayne County offer opportunities to balance the College's natural inward focus. For example, the wider Wooster community offers our students a distinctive ethnic, class, racial, and religious pluralism, and likewise students have much to offer the wider Wooster community. Wooster students are normally welcomed within the wider community, but building better bridges to this community can help avoid the problems that some students, especially minority students and international students, have faced.

Objective: To build bridges to the Wooster community.

To provide service learning opportunities for students.
To increase the visibility of the College in the wider community.
To collaborate with outside agencies in strengthening the campus climate for cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity.

Enrollment

A major challenge for The College of Wooster over the next five years is to maintain stability in enrollment and at the same time to attract and retain a student body of high quality and broad diversity. Increased national recognition will make these tasks easier, and the College's future success will be determined by having reputation and influence which is defined not just regionally but also nationally and internationally.

Objective: To attract and retain students well-prepared for a Wooster education.

To increase the student applicant pool by 6 percent each year over the next three years and thereby improve selectivity from 86 percent to 70 percent by 2001;
To stabilize enrollment at 1,675 - 1700 residential students, with continued balance between men and women;
To maintain the national nature of the College by enrolling at least 50 percent non-Ohio residents in each first-year class;
To improve the indicators of academic preparation and potential, such as grade point averages, rank in class, and test scores;
To increase "retention through graduation" to 75 percent in six years, by achieving 90 percent retention from first to second year and 80 percent retention from first to third year.

National Recognition

The College stands to gain substantially in admissions and other areas of its operation from increased national recognition. As Wooster gains in stature, the College will attract greater external support in the form of gifts, institutional and faculty grants, and opportunities for positions of leadership in national conferences, boards, commissions and other activities that are shaping American education. Ultimately, enhanced national recognition will enable the College to achieve its objectives for the academic program and gain greater control over enrollment.

Objective: To achieve greater recognition as a liberal arts college of national stature.

To be counted among the top rank of those institutions recognized as national liberal arts colleges by the Carnegie Foundation.
To increase the number of national liberal arts colleges in the top rank which appear among Wooster's forty top overlap schools in admissions applications.
To organize and institutionalize the collection, analysis, and dissemination of data and information on all aspects of the College's operation, including enrollment and national recognition.

Resources:
Facilities

Since the fire which consumed Old Main in 1901, Wooster has been fortunate to create a campus graced with thirty-nine beautiful buildings, mostly in the English collegiate Gothic style. These buildings have served the College well and are one of its major attractions. The beauty of the campus and of its buildings and other spaces is a key factor in recruiting students. However, instruction in many areas of the curriculum is quite different from what it was just thirty-five years ago; and facilities required for Wooster's style of teaching and learning are changing rapidly, particularly in the use of instructional technologies.

The Campaign for Wooster in the 1980's and the Campaign for the 1990's produced a building sequence matched only by the flurry of buildings constructed after the 1901 fire. During the period from 1983 to 1999, we will have added the Scheide Music Center, Luce Hall, and the Flo K. Gault Library for Independent Study, transformed Severance Gymnasium into the Ebert Art Center, renovated Kenarden Lodge, renovated Frick Hall as the Timken Science Library, and expanded and thoroughly renovated Scovel, Taylor, and Severance Chemistry. With costs totaling over $50 million, these projects have stretched the giving capabilities of the College's constituencies.

Nevertheless, a number of important building needs remain. Several of these comprise the goals for campus buildings from 1998 to 2003.

Objective: To maintain and improve Wooster's buildings and grounds in order to provide a physical environment which supports the academic and campus life goals of the College.

To develop a master campus plan for facilities and land use.
To begin an assessment of space utilization and needs in Kauke Hall, as a first step in the planning process for renovation of this building, last renovated in 1962.
To complete the assessment begun several years ago of the specific needs and possibilities for additional recreational and athletic space, as a step in planning for a new fieldhouse/recreation center supporting the health and well-being of all members of the community.
To begin an assessment of the quality of small house living arrangements in order to establish a program of rehabilitation or to provide more cost-effective small house living opportunities.
To reconstruct the student activities office area in Lowry Center.

Computing and Technology

Wooster's academic program emphasizes active learning, and the College takes pride in its individualized attention to students in seminar rooms, laboratories, faculty offices, and residence halls. In the academic program, technology is used to enhance these human interactions rather than to replace them; on the administrative side, it is used to improve the quality of administrative functions.

Through gifts and grants, the College's facilities for computing and instructional technology have grown enormously in the last ten years. Computer facilities have been added and strengthened in Taylor Hall and Kauke Hall, and the campus network has been enhanced by a fiber-optic backbone and the updating of building networks to an ethernet standard. However, needs continue to grow as the pace of technological development accelerates. The challenge is to keep pace with advances in the integration of technology with teaching and administrative functions.

Objective: To stay current with uses of computing and technology in instruction, learning, research, and administration.

To increase the quality and effectiveness of technology utilization on campus, particularly in teaching and learning.
To complete by 2000 the wiring project updating the College's buildings to an ethernet protocol for the campus computer network.
To provide equipment budgets sufficient for the replacement of twenty percent of the College's desktop computers each year.
To centralize the acquisition and management of hardware and software.
To explore the establishment of a single platform standard.

Financial Resources

Through the generosity of alumni, trustees, and friends, Wooster has been fortunate in its ability to gather financial resources in support of its program. Sustaining and strengthening these resources requires self-discipline and careful reallocation in order to meet the resource implications of the objectives established in this plan. During the period 1998 to 2003, Wooster will undertake the following:

Objective: To ensure the financial preconditions for Wooster's continuing academic excellence by maintaining and strengthening the College's financial resources.

To strengthen the endowment and its contribution to the College's operation.
To limit annual comprehensive fee increases to a rate between the rate of inflation and one percentage point above the rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index.
To increase net student revenue by the rate of inflation plus between 1% and 2%.
To balance the budget each year from 1998 to 2003 and operate each auxiliary enterprise on a break-even basis and in a manner which contributes to the mission of the College.
To increase gifts for operations and financial aid, exclusive of government gifts for financial aid, from a share of 7% to 9% of the operating budget.
To engage in cost containment and thereby reach salary goals for faculty and staff and achieve competitive pricing without jeopardizing the overall quality of the academic program.

Conclusion

This plan is the product of deliberations about Wooster's future undertaken by faculty, administration, staff, students, and trustees over a period of a year and a half. It contains the thoughtful contributions of the College's many constituencies, but it is still a "work in progress." The plan will of necessity change as we experience successes and challenges in different areas. The President, his Executive Staff, and the Board of Trustees will have the responsibility to monitor the progress of the plan and to report on this progress to the college community.

The College's success arises from sound principles, from the quality of its people--faculty, administration, staff, students, trustees, and alumni and alumnae--and from the community we create together. The College intends always to respect and support efforts by individuals, but it is our work in common to achieve the objectives in this plan that will make the crucial difference in realizing Wooster's promise. We call upon all of the College's constituencies to join in this task.

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	Last Updated: 9/27/03 Mark Hanke Mhanke@wooster.edu