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Strategic Plan - Levels I & II
FY 2001-2005
Of all the threats to the institution the most dangerous come from within. Not the least among them is the smugness that believes the institution's value is so self-evident that it no longer needs explication, its mission so manifest that it no longer requires definition and articulation. A. Bartlett Giamatti, A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, (1988).
Upon the arrival of President William Durden in 1999, the College resolved to create a plan to meet the challenges of the years ahead. This Strategic Plan is the result of an intensive planning process that began in July 1999. It builds on numerous planning efforts that have been undertaken at the College since about 1994, but which never evolved into the comprehensive plan that circumstances now require.
The plan that follows has a general time-horizon of five years and is intended to address mission-critical functions at the College. It was conceived by a specially convened Strategic Planning Committee and is organized around ten main issues - five Defining Characteristics, or elements of the Dickinson educational experience that are essential and distinctive, and five Enabling Conditions, or conditions that must be met if we are to continue to compete successfully for students and resources. Each of these issues is stated in terms of a Strategic Objective, each with attendant Goals. Ultimately, these goals will be addressed by specific Strategies. The plan, therefore, follows an organizational hierarchy that becomes more detailed and action-oriented with every step.
The American Revolution brought into being the world's first modern democracy and launched an ambitious social and political experiment. Our founders, John Dickinson and Benjamin Rush, were themselves leading figures of the revolution and the new republic. They recognized that the success of the American experiment would depend on the power of liberal education to remake colonial society and to produce a democratic culture. With this important goal in mind, they transformed the Carlisle Grammar School (which had been founded in 1773) into an institution of higher learning: Dickinson College. The College was chartered on September 9, 1783, less than a week after the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolution and guaranteed recognition to the United States by Great Britain and the rest of the European powers.
Dickinson College, therefore, began life as the first college formed under the banner of the young republic and, more importantly, as a revolutionary project - dedicated to safeguarding liberty through the creation of an educated body of citizen-leaders. Although the urgency of the American revolutionary period has diminished, the core mission of Dickinson College remains the same - and as vital as ever.
Dickinson College prepares aspiring students for engaged and fulfilling lives of accomplishment, leadership, and service to their professions, to their communities, to the nation, and to the world. Our founders intended the College to be a powerful agent of change - to advance the lot of humankind - and we expect no less today.
Drawing on the wisdom of Benjamin Rush, one of our founders and one of the young nation's foremost educators and reformers, we seek to connect Rush's eighteenth-century vision for the College to our contemporary aspirations. By enlisting the support of John Dickinson, one of America's leading public figures, Rush sought to give the College a national profile from its inception. Today, we must continue to be a college of national prominence and consequence that is unequivocally regarded as one of the best in America. Our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and distinguished founders deserve nothing less than an unchallengeable claim to excellence and distinction. This continuing aspiration, derived from the founding vision of Benjamin Rush, is fundamental to our future success.
Rush's shoulders, therefore, are those upon which we stand to glimpse our future. In addition to his practical ambitions for Dickinson, Rush's vision for the College had three principal elements which we affirm and translate into contemporary terms:
Dickinson is committed to providing a useful education in the context of a liberal arts and sciences curriculum and within a residential setting.
Dickinson is characterized by a willingness to cross borders of all types - geographic, cultural, linguistic, disciplinary, pedagogical.
Dickinson is marked by its enterprising spirit, its courage to exercise leadership, its capacity for innovation, and its decisiveness.
Dickinson College: a Useful Education
Benjamin Rush was a progressive and complex thinker with distinct views about higher education in America and at Dickinson. His guiding principle was to provide a "useful" education. This emphasis on useful disciplines and practical interdisciplinary connections was in deliberate contrast to higher education in the Old World, which had become rigid, disconnected from the world, and overly aristocratic. Rush's vision of a useful college is enshrined in the language of our charter, where the College itself is described as "so useful an institution" and is charged with the duty "to disseminate and promote the growth of useful knowledge" and the "useful arts, sciences and literature."
In addition to pursuing useful knowledge in the classroom, Rush believed that students should witness the "machine of the republic" by attending the courts of justice to observe the use of rhetoric, eloquence, and evidence - and to observe the method of discovering truth by comparing and arranging ideas. In the courts, students could also see the laws of the state explained and applied in a practical context. In contemporary parlance, students should have internships and other experiences in the community to complement their classroom studies.
Today, we must continue to develop skills and competencies that will serve students for a lifetime, and it is in this way that the useful dimension of liberal education is to be understood and realized. Some of these skills are quite tangible: effective writing and speaking, critical thinking, foreign language proficiency, prioritization, and facility with technology. Other outcomes are more intangible, but nonetheless important: experience with leadership and teamwork, self-initiative, independence, persistence, maturity, sensitivity to diversity, flexibility, and scientific and cultural literacy. Others are less tangible still: an urge to search for truth, beauty, and goodness, a passion for learning and life, an ability to offer and absorb contradiction, a respect for ideas and their development, a concern for values, a sense of service to the greater community, an enterprising and curious spirit, and an authentic sense of personal strengths and limitations. It is precisely these useful traits imparted by liberal education that will equip our students to be successful in the globally connected and complex world of the twenty-first century - where knowledge respects no geographic, disciplinary, or cultural boundaries.
We must develop these skills and habits of mind in the context of a curriculum that is rich, diverse, and innovative. The curriculum should remain grounded in the traditional disciplines, but innovation should be sought in their interstices and in the powerful connections that emerge when the disciplines converse. Interdisciplinarity in the curriculum should be complemented by an attitude of engagement with the wider world that provides opportunities to connect theory to application - through international education, internships, alumni networks, and emerging opportunities for the College and our students in cyberspace.
Furthermore, we must assert the distinctive role of the Dickinson residential living-learning environment as the best preparation for lives of engagement and high accomplishment. We should create a residential environment in which students work with others to discover within themselves an attitude of commitment to community that will prepare them for a life of substantive civic responsibility and service.
We affirm the vision of Dickinson as a college that regards liberal education as useful and that engages America and engages the world.
Dickinson College: Crossing Borders
Rush valued the wisdom of the past, but he was also an expansive thinker, who reached across national, cultural, and disciplinary borders. He believed that liberal education should concern itself with those academic subjects which interconnect and reach across to other subjects in a useful manner. Modern languages should be taught, therefore, because they provide access to knowledge in all disciplines. Rush also believed in crossing beyond the borders of the United State and in study abroad - but with a disciplined agenda to return with knowledge to advance the republic. So, too, Rush supported the study of the new field of chemistry, since, by its interdisciplinary nature, it unlocked knowledge in other disciplines. And Rush insisted on acquiring the equipment of scientist-revolutionary Joseph Priestley, so that Dickinson students and faculty could use the most advanced technology of the day to cross the borders of existing knowledge through scientific discovery.
Today, we must continue to engage in Rush's habit of crossing borders. We must engage America beyond the limestone walls of campus, and we must engage the world beyond our shores through international education. In teaching and learning, we must embrace and discover new pedagogies that create active learners and that take advantage of new instructional technologies. As scholars and artists, we must strive to reach across disciplinary boundaries in fruitful ways, recognizing that strong disciplines are essential to interdisciplinarity. Students must be challenged to cross borders pertaining to culture and belief and to stretch themselves in preparation for life in a complex world. Crossing borders provides opportunities for reflection and invigoration - and for growth for our students and for the College.
We affirm the vision of Dickinson that crosses borders in search of new knowledge and opportunities for growth.
Dickinson College: an Enterprising, Dynamic College
A further aspect of Rush's founding vision for Dickinson is the spirit of institutional innovation and decisiveness. As a revolutionary, Rush defied organizational stasis and recognized that new external circumstances require appropriate internal changes. He pushed forward to create a college in the midst of wilderness, rallying others with the power and persuasiveness of his vision.
Throughout its history, the College has continued to display this penchant for enterprise and its willingness to seize opportunities as they arise. For example, more than a century ago, the College embraced co-education and opened its doors to women. Although retaining its core commitment to undergraduate education, Dickinson began a law department which later evolved into an independent school of law. At various times in its history, the College has entertained other innovations: a seminary, a medical school, an Institute for Peace, and a business program. Dickinson, too, has awarded earned graduate degrees during the course of its history.
The willingness to explore new ideas and to engage in vigorous debate was a distinctive feature of Dickinson from the start. For example, from early in the life of the College, student social life revolved around two competing debating societies - Belles Lettres founded in 1786 and the Union Philosophical Society founded in 1789. From its beginning, therefore, Dickinson has been a vocal community where civil and informed exchange, reasoned opinion, and respectful debate were defining elements of the institution's culture.
Today, the College needs to remain true to its heritage by being receptive to salutary change and by being committed to negotiating change through civil and informed debate. Higher education is a competitive and fast-paced world, with challenges from other colleges and universities as well as from the for-profit education industry. In order to maintain and improve our position, the College must become more flexible, more enterprising, and more innovative - moving quickly to recognize and embrace opportunities. We must summon the courage to face our shortcomings directly and to identify strategies to address them. We must trust one another to make tough decisions, recognizing that the good of the entire institution takes priority over that of specific programs. By doing this, we will create for Dickinson a leadership position within the world of higher education and particularly within the residential, liberal arts college sector. We will also instruct our students, by our example, in these useful habits of mind and action.
We affirm the vision of Dickinson as a college that is enterprising, innovative, and decisive.
Internal conditions: The College and its people are ready for change; we recognize the need for it and are ready to facilitate the process. Dickinson clearly benefits from strong faculty and staff who are extraordinarily dedicated to the institution. When decisions are required for the good of the institution as a whole, the dedication of the faculty and staff to the College should facilitate making difficult decisions. Fortunately, the College built its financial reserves in the early 1990s, providing resources to weather difficult times in the short term. Overall, there is a low degree of deferred maintenance on College facilities, and the campus is attractive. It shows well to prospective students and creates a sense of pride among our alumni and the on-campus community.
In assessing our ability to be successful, however, we must also recognize that our governance system, with its many committees and significant faculty participation, must continue to be challenged to make difficult choices in a timely and efficient manner. In the face of tough choices, we must recognize the need to achieve consensus and to act decisively.
Other internal factors of concern include: a structured deficit budget situation; an endowment with hampered growth potential because of the draw on reserves for financial aid; college borrowing near its reasonable limit; an under-developed culture of philanthropy among our alumni; no firm consensus on the College's identity; relatively weak salaries making it difficult to recruit the best faculty and staff; and a relatively homogeneous on-campus community. Finally, we will require more and better data upon which to base decisions in the future. Dickinson's current information systems and the uneven quality of available data will hinder our ability to make informed decisions in some areas.
External conditions: The College, like all schools of our type, is also faced with significant external challenges. They include: the declining popularity of the residential liberal arts experience; the high cost of financial aid; the emerging competition from the for-profit education industry; the potential challenge of distance learning; the rising costs of health and liability insurance; the increasing litigiousness of society and the high costs of legal services; the decreasing funding available through state, federal, and private organizations to liberal arts colleges; the high cost of equipment in the sciences and computer technology generally; and the increasingly consumer-oriented parent and student audiences that enjoy wide choices and, therefore, require high levels of service.
There are some encouraging external factors to note. The economy is still strong, and the public is favorably disposed to higher education and its benefits, though clearly concerned about the cost. Strong returns on the stock market have created wealth among our donors. The pool of high school graduates will increase through 2008, though much of that increase will occur outside of Dickinson's traditional market areas. Collaborative learning - one of our strengths - is necessary in the workplace, as is team-oriented problem solving. In addition, the increased globalization of society plays to Dickinson's strengths, while the growth of the internet and our ability through technology initiatives, such as the Caliber classroom, to harness that growth, could position Dickinson as a leader in this area.
Those liberal arts colleges that will continue to thrive in the twenty-first century will be those that clearly target the challenges, discuss them thoroughly, develop a disciplined plan for advancing the institution, streamline their decision-making processes to take advantage of opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, clearly communicate their agenda to their internal and external communities and motivate them to meet the challenges confidently.
We must, in addition to all this, demonstrate to future college students why liberal education is the best possible preparation for lives of high accomplishment in a complex, dynamic, and global world - where leaders will be those who comfortably and regularly cross the borders of culture, belief, language, and knowledge. To remain faithful to the founding vision of Benjamin Rush, the College must not be a sheltered cloister set apart from society. To be successful, the College and our students must engage America and engage the world.
The Defining Characteristics are:
The Enabling Conditions are:
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