September 9, 2008

Dear Fellow Scots:

A new year of liberal inquiry — Wooster’s 139th — has begun, and I write to share some thoughts about what it will bring and where we will go together as it unfolds.

The arrival of new first-year and transfer students and the events arranged to welcome and orient them to the campus community got us off to a high-energy start. At a reception Peg and I hosted at our home, the parents of these incoming students were stumbling over their words in search of superlatives to describe how they felt about the orientation program, and the care and organization manifest in every small detail. For them, all of this was testament to the overall quality of the College. I could not agree more.

I am pleased to report that by all accounts the 515 new first-years who make up the Class of 2012 are a great group of students.  We made significant strides towards our diversity goals this year. Our first-year class is 15% multiethnic and includes 10% African-American students.  This puts us on par with the very best liberal arts colleges in the country.  Of 14 new tenure-track faculty we hired this past season, seven of them bring additional diversity to the faculty.  In both cases, this shows what can be accomplished with commitment and dedication to a goal.

Diversity and global engagement was one of several broad areas identified last fall by the Board of Trustees as high priorities for the immediate future, a judgment reinforced by last spring’s strategic planning exercises. As we begin the new academic year, it’s appropriate to review how we are doing on those priorities and what comes next.

Diversity and Global Engagement

Our core purpose, which is to offer “a rigorous and comprehensive education to students with the capacity and motivation to become educated leaders in a complex society,” means that we must be unrelenting in our quest to build a learning community with a diversity of voices as varied as those our students will engage upon graduation.  This is a systemic, institution-wide commitment that entails focused attention on admissions, on faculty and staff recruitment, on our overall campus climate, and on the development of our academic curriculum.

The mere presence of people who come to our collective project from a diversity of backgrounds and identities – including race, ethnicity, nationality, religious belief, sexual orientation, and socio-economic class – is a necessary but not sufficient condition of excellence given our mission.  We have to be intentional in building a campus community where students, faculty, and staff of all backgrounds and identities can learn together and from one another.

Last year I convened a Diversity Task Force to research how other liberal arts colleges organize their diversity work. The group has not yet come to closure on a proposal for an organizational model most fitting for Wooster, but they will conclude their work this year in time to share their proposal with the Board and various campus constituencies.

As the composition of our campus community evolves, so must our academic program.  Wooster’s curriculum is both broad and deep in its offerings that help develop our students’ capacities for intercultural understanding and responsible global citizenship.  To foster further innovation in this area, I will dedicate two new discretionary funds in the coming year to the academic development of diversity and global engagement:

• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Presidential Discretionary Fund:  This past spring we received the outstanding news that The College of Wooster was the beneficiary of an unsolicited award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for $100,000 to be used by the President over the next three years to foster initiatives central to the advancement of the College.  We will use this award to help support international field study abroad or study in the U.S. of American democracy, multiculturalism and inequality.

• The Smucker Fund for Global Ethics: Thanks to a generous and visionary gift to the endowment during the Independent Minds Campaign from Tim and Jenny Smucker and The Smucker Foundation, we have established The Smucker Fund for Global Ethics to support the teaching of ethics and global citizenship, issues that are of high priority to the Smuckers.  Proposals will be sought from faculty, administrative staff, and students for the use of these funds annually, and they might go towards the development of new or revised courses addressing issues of global ethics and citizenship, or to campus programs designed to engage students in ethical reflection on critical global issues.

Community and Communication

Perhaps nothing is more essential to realizing our institutional mission than nurturing a vibrant and inclusive campus community where all constituencies – students, faculty, and staff in every division of the College – share a common sense of purpose and a feeling of pride and joy in pursuing that purpose together. Last year I paid a great deal of attention to building community on campus, to opening channels of communication with the students, faculty, and staff, and to listening carefully to Wooster’s many constituencies even as I began to share my own vision and hopes for the College. Those efforts will continue this year unabated.

Wooster’s community, however, extends far beyond the campus. I was able to meet with several alumni groups around the country last year, and also met or corresponded with many alumni individually. They shared advice, memories, concerns, and aspirations for the College. This year, I will increase my efforts to engage the alumni of the College through events, meetings, and correspondence.

Institutional Commitment to Environmental Sustainability

Just as giving proper attention to diversity and global engagement is a comprehensive, campus-wide endeavor, so too are issues of environmental sustainability. For several years we have had an ad hoc Environmental Task Force, currently chaired by Susan Clayton and Chuck Wagers, charged with monitoring environmental issues campus-wide and making recommendations for enhancements, innovations, and improvements. This year, I will act on the recommendation of the Environmental Task Force to establish a Committee for a Sustainable Campus, which will be charged to review campus practices and make recommendations for changes in those practices that will: reduce harmful effects on the natural environment; reduce energy consumption and employ sustainable energy sources where possible; and, enhance awareness and experience of the natural world on campus.

The Environmental Task Force has also drafted a statement of principles and aspirations for Wooster that is called the “Commitment to Environmental Stewardship,” which will be reviewed by campus constituencies and, pending the appropriate endorsements, will be brought to the Board for their consideration.

In addition, there is a great deal of interest in the development of our fledgling academic program in environmental studies, which takes a problem focused approach that combines classroom learning with practical solutions. We have faculty interest that is both deep and broad and we have strong and growing student demand for environmental studies. To support curriculum development for our newly approved academic minor in the area, I am dedicating the Hales Fund for 2008-09 to supporting an interdisciplinary group of faculty who will study global environmental issues, pursue their research in field studies next summer, and return to develop new course materials.

Further Development of Wooster’s Educational Program

As a residential liberal arts college, Wooster’s educational program encompasses the totality of our curriculum, the academic, scholarly, and creative opportunities afforded our students, and the vast array of co-curricular opportunities offered through our programs in student life and athletics. By singling out the programs and initiatives below for strategic focus I do not intend to imply any relative lack of importance of all the rest, but only that these are areas that seem ripe to benefit from immediate creative attention.

• Independent Study: Our Independent Study program and the curriculum that leads up to it position Wooster as the nation’s premier liberal arts college for undergraduate research. The program is recognized in higher education and recent analysis reveals that our admissions market is well aware of it as a distinction.  At the same time, we need to develop a comprehensive assessment of the program and its educational outcomes, as well as a systematic understanding of its commonalities and differences across departments and programs, and we would benefit from a clearer account of how our overall curriculum prepares students for the rigors of Independent Study. This research and analysis will be the focus of our academic assessment work this year.

• Learning Commons: Last year, under Iain Crawford’s leadership, The Future of the Libraries Task Force submitted its report. We also hired a new director of libraries, Mark Christel, and a new director of instructional technology, Matt Gardzina. This confluence of new vision means that this year we are poised to take a fresh look at how we support undergraduate research and inquiry while also developing students’ information and technological literacies. Iain will work with Mark and Matt, faculty and librarians, to develop a proposal for an approach to this work, so central to a liberal education in the twenty-first century, which is specifically crafted for Wooster’s curriculum and designed to support undergraduate inquiry.

• Advising: Every liberal arts college, including Wooster, boasts that one reason to choose this kind of higher education over others is that it provides opportunities for close mentoring of students by caring and attentive faculty. In many instances, student experience falls short of an institution’s promise. Wooster, however, is uniquely positioned to build a comprehensive and integrated approach to advising that will deliver on its promise and distinguish us from our peers. Currently, we have a number of programs or offices dedicated to advising students in their academic, personal, and career development. This year Shila Garg and Peter Havholm will lead an effort to explore how we can bring the Center for Academic Advising, Career Services, and the Lilly Project into a dynamic collaboration, creating a fully integrated approach to mentoring our students in their development.

Improving Wooster’s Governance and Administration

We should be relentless in our efforts to improve our organizational structure, policies, administrative services, and business practices in our aspiration to move from good to great as an organization. In all of these areas we need to balance our commitments to transparency and responsiveness with the highest standards of efficiency, clarity, and alacrity.

• Revisions to the Statute of Instruction: Last year the faculty and the Board approved revisions to the Statute of Instruction, the most significant of which was replacing the President as the presiding officer at Faculty Meetings with an elected member of the faculty. There are a number of other potential revisions under discussion. I will look to the Committee on Conference with Trustees to continue to guide us in Statute revisions, this year focused on the policies and procedures for faculty grievance and dismissal reviews, and on a range of issues pertaining to the policies and procedures governing the evaluation, promotion, and tenure of the faculty.

• Incremental Reorganization of Academic Affairs: In addition, we will make incremental progress in the reorganization of the administration of academic affairs. We are exploring possible new organizational models and I will work with Iain, Shila, and the faculty to refine our understanding of those possibilities and build our readiness for a new model that will work best for Wooster.

• Budgeting: Last year, John Sell, in his role as acting vice president for finance and business, worked with the Financial Advisory Committee to develop a transparent and participatory process for evaluating competing needs for capital reinvestment and allocating the funds available on an annual basis. This year, John will lead an effort to create a complementary revision of how we go about developing our annual operating budgets. In addition to trying to raise our standards of transparency, accountability, and efficient budget management, the primary goal of these efforts is to align our resource allocation with our strategic priorities.

• Search for a new Vice President for Finance and Business: We are well into the process of searching for a new vice president for finance and business. We have contracted the services of Witt/Kieffer, the lead search consultants in this area and I am chairing the search committee, whose members include Keith Beckett, director of physical education, athletics and recreation; Iain Crawford; Susan Lehman, assistant professor of physics; Bill Morgan, professor of biology; and three trustees: Dave Gunning, Bill Longbrake, and Jim Wilson.

• Human Resources: John Sanders, our new associate vice president for human resources, will focus on two areas in particular this year. First, we do not currently have a consistent practice of undertaking systematic performance reviews for College staff and administration. John will help us develop schedules and methodologies that make sense for Wooster and then help us implement them. Second, he will begin to organize a review of a range of issues warranting our attention that fall under the broad category of compensation policies for faculty and staff.

• Institutional Advancement and Development: It is clear that Wooster enjoys the benefits of a highly professional and productive development staff led by Sally Patton. This year, we will be searching for an additional director of development, creating a plan to build a comprehensive program for parents of Wooster students, and analyzing our current capacities for research into potential donors.

Admissions, Retention, and Marketing

The paramount strategic priority for The College of Wooster is stabilizing our enrollment while optimizing our academic profile, diversity demographics, and financial aid budget. This year, Mary Karen Vellines will be bringing forward a comprehensive enrollment plan for Board consideration that will set targets for the next five years across the range of our key indices.

As we strive to develop our admissions practices so that they are second to none in terms of professionalism, personal attention, responsiveness, creativity, and outright hustle, we are also paying a great deal of attention to how we communicate Wooster’s value to prospective students and their families. A particular priority for this year that will contribute much in this regard is the successful launch of a thoroughly redesigned web site for the College. John Hopkins is working with various campus constituencies and a leading design firm, BigBad, Inc., to completely re-engineer our web site to serve as an outstanding platform for communication with prospective students, while also serving our campus community and alumni.

As important as recruiting the first-year class each year is retaining our current students. While we have a number of retention measures actively in place, we have to improve our persistence and graduation rates. This year, Kurt Holmes will be leading a comprehensive retention effort that will begin with systematic research into attrition and result in a report that offers concrete recommendations on how we can make progress towards a goal of first to second year retention of 90% (currently 86%) and a six-year graduation rate of 80% (currently 73%).

Campus Stewardship

As we affirmed last year, we should aspire to maintain one of the most well designed, best kept, and most beautiful liberal arts campuses in the country. While our campus is loved by alumni and frequently praised by visitors, we know that we must continue investing in our facilities and grounds with an unflagging commitment to continuous improvement and the highest standards of maintenance and polish. This year, three projects are evidence of our commitment to maintain a diverse inventory of high quality student residences. Gault Manor is complete and the new home of 73 very fortunate students while Babcock Hall is undergoing a major renovation and refurbishment. The small houses on College Avenue also have received beautiful external face-lifts this past summer. The regular refurbishment of student residences, however, must remain a regular priority in our annual capital reinvestment.

The Classroom Stewards, faculty members who represent each academic building, assessed the teaching spaces on campus and as a result of their recommendations Lean Lecture Hall and Mateer G01 were thoroughly renovated over the summer. Also, plans are well underway to construct an artificial turf field in John J. Papp Stadium during the summer of 2009. Not only will this serve our student-athletes on several teams and provide a durable recreational facility for the campus, this project will also redress what had become a significant recruiting liability with our peer institutions.

As a final strategic priority in campus stewardship for the coming year, the Campus Center Steering Committee will continue to work through the planning process for the new facility. Last year we completed an extensive study of our programmatic needs and came to a consensus on the vision and program for the new facility. We commissioned a series of cost estimates and the services of MacLachlan, Cornelius & Filoni, Inc. to help us hone the program and imagine designs that would meet our needs. Our goals for the Campus Center project for this year are the following: (1) complete the efficiency study of the program and agree on the scope and scale of the project; (2) select an architect for the project; and (3) complete a financial plan for the project, complete with fund raising strategy and timetable.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a critical dimension of good governance and administration. In some sense, we have been actively engaged in a strategic planning process as a community since we began the presidential search. The institutional analysis and conversations that lead to the writing of the presidential search prospectus identified critical issues, concerns and aspirations. Throughout the period of my orientation and transition, faculty, staff, students, trustees, and alumni extended this reflection on the College and its future. Last year, facilitated by our consultant Max Stark, the Cabinet, members of the faculty on elected committees, a broad group of administrative staff, and the Board worked through exercises designed to identify the key strategic questions that we need to answer as part of a process of developing a comprehensive strategic plan for Wooster. All of the issues identified in this memo as strategic priorities are extensions of this process.

Our goal in this work is to move from the periodic planning model that Wooster has used in the past toward a more dynamic, continuous planning process. However, even this more fluid model requires documentation, albeit not in the form of a series of discrete, fixed-term plans. My sense, and that of our board chair, Jim Wilson and vice chair, Dave Gunning, is that the most productive next step will be for me to author a draft of a strategic plan for Wooster, drawing on all of the sources cited above. We will then begin a process of sharing this draft, together with Max Stark’s report on the strategic planning retreats last year, with faculty, staff, students, the Alumni Board, and the Board of Trustees. We anticipate that, after ample conversation and revision, this will produce a clear vision of our future and a concrete plan on how best to realize it.

Thank You

In closing, I wish to thank all of you — faculty, staff, students, and alumni — for your good will and generosity of spirit through the presidential transition. Last year was a time for sharing hopes and aspirations. This year it is a time to make bold and dramatic progress on the work immediately before us. Our goal is nothing less than to secure our future as one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges and that goal can only be achieved by all of us working towards it relentlessly and in collaboration.

Sincerely,

Grant Cornwell