<nesday, April 27, 2011, President Steven Poskanzer officially announced to the Carleton community via email that he has begun the process of creating a strategic plan for the future of Carleton. The overarching goal of the plan is to provide an undergraduate Liberal Arts education that is among the best in the world. The plan will be constructed in the upcoming months. Since February, there have been several shared general planning processes with the Board of Trustees, Faculty, Staff department managers, Staff at Carleton, Alumni Council, and CSA. Roughly every ten to fifteen years, the college aims to put together a plan for the next decade. As the plan gets underway, there will be an increasing number of community members involved.
“First we’ll start with developing a strategic plan for the college that will set all of our general priorities, academic programmatic priorities,” said President Poskanzer. “From that will come facilities plans that will tell us which projects, of all the things we could do, we should be doing first.”
In addition to discussing the course of events for the plan, Poskanzer said that “the academics always have to come first” in respect to any future building projects. The college created a list of “Assumptions” and “Questions to be Answered” that are to be discussed and framed by the Carleton community.
Poskanzer invited comments and criticisms concerning these assumptions and questions to be shared in the following weeks. Once these have been compiled, Poskanzer will delegate “Working Groups” to begin their planning and deliberation in the fall.
Sample assumptions include, among others, “We want the education we provide and our graduates’ outlooks to embrace the global nature of the world” and “Our economy should be self-sustaining over the long run.” In contrast, some of the questions to be answered include “As the world changes, what should we be doing to keep our curriculum and academic programs strong?” and “What does ‘preparing our students for careers and lives after graduation’ really mean?”
When asked about reasons for beginning the plan now, Poskanzer said, “We’ve had a capital campaign that was successful. Now, it’s time to use that money and figure out where to go from there.”
For more information and updates go to go.carleton.edu/strategic.