On Sept. 30, President Katherine Bergeron announced the final list of the students, staff and faculty members who would make up this year’s Strategic Planning Committee. John Nugent, director of institutional research and planning, will staff the committee, and the school will also work with outside consulting firm Keeling and Associates. K&A has worked with numerous other schools in past years, including other NESCACs such as Colby College and Hamilton College, according to their website. The committee will be meeting bi-weekly, with frequent visits from the K&A consultants.
In a follow up email to the campus community after her initial announcement of the committee, President Bergeron explained that the committee will work towards “identify[ing] our goals and priorities for the next five to 10 year. The process will engage the whole community: staff, faculty, trustees, alumni, parents and friends of the College. It is one of the most ambitious projects we will undertake this year.”
Grace Juster ’16, one of the students selected for the committee and the president for the class of 2016, told the Voice via email that by the end of the year the goal is to have a stronger idea of “what distinguishes Connecticut College and a plan to best emphasize the assets and opportunities found here.”
According to the Strategic Planning Process page found on the College’s website, the work of the committee will be split into three categories during the course of the year. First, the “engagement, information gathering, and planning phase,” which will occur from August-December 2015. This phase will consist of interviews, surveys and general data and information gathering plans. To interact with the larger campus community, the committee has planned larger open forums, similar to the “town hall” style meetings held in previous years when the curriculum reform was underway. Juster explained: “We are in a data gathering stage and need to hear your voices to make changes.”
Phase two will begin in January 2016 and last until early April. During this time, the committee, and the larger College community, will review the findings from the previous phase, as well as continue to refine the goals and objectives of the plan going into the final phase.
The final phase will begin in April, and will end with the academic year. “Implementation/action plan completion” will see the handoff of the plan to the Implementation/Action Planning Group, and ultimately the final review and approval of the strategic plan that will lead the College into the future. Juster stressed the importance that seniors will play in throughout the year as the plan is formed, calling it an “opportunity for our class to reflect on what went well or what could of gone better during our time here and make Conn the best it can be for future classes.”
The other student representatives on the Strategic Planning Committee are Roxanne Low ’19, Gil Mejia ’17 and Jake Varsano ’18. •
