Dickinson College

Strategic Plan - Levels I & II

FY 2001-2005

• I. Defining Characteristic: A Community of Inquiry
• II. Defining Characteristic: Global Perspective
• III. Defining Characteristic: Useful Education
• IV. Defining Characteristic: Citizen-Leaders
• V. Defining Characteristic: Diversity
• VI. Enabling Condition: People
• VII. Enabling Condition: Financial Stability
• VIII. Enabling Condition: Lifelong Affiliation
• IX. Enabling Condition: Technology & Information Management
• X. Enabling Condition: Visibility

I. Defining Characteristic: A Community of Inquiry

A. Objective: Strengthen Dickinson's commitment to the teacher-scholar model, in which faculty and students actively engage in the creation of new knowledge through original research, in and among the disciplines, and through active engagement in the wider scholarly world.

1. Goal: Sustain faculty scholarship by providing resources to support research and professional involvement. Continue to reward scholarly activity and accomplishment. Enhance the visibility of faculty research findings. Encourage faculty to strengthen connections between their scholarship and the classroom, where appropriate.

2. Goal: Increase opportunities for students to engage in research, both in collaboration with faculty and independently. Introduce students to the wider community of scholars, involving them as participants whenever possible.

B. Objective: Support the exploration of new pedagogical approaches that transform students into active learners.

1. Goal: Encourage experimentation with and adoption of interactive and collaborative pedagogies. Encourage a variety of approaches, such as: the workshop method pioneered in Physics and Mathematics; the use of oral history and community projects developed in the Mosaic semester; intensive laboratory and field work conducted in the sciences and elsewhere; and the case studies used in International Business & Management.

2. Goal: Broaden the application of academic technology across the curriculum. Create an environment at the College that facilitates faculty experiments with new applications, captures growing student interest in and facility with such technologies, and expands our reach through cyberspace and distance learning.

3. Goal: Acknowledge the co-curriculum in the arts as a place where students integrate academic study and application. Strengthen the co-curriculum and use it as a model for extension of learning into student activity in fields beyond the arts.

C. Objective: Provide more opportunities for members of the community to engage in active, informed debate of critical issues of self, society, and the natural world.

D. Objective: Promote and enhance interdisciplinarity at the College.

1. Goal: Support the development of interdisciplinary programs and encourage increased cooperation among the disciplines so as to underscore learning through contexts.

2. Goal: Enhance the activities of academic organizations of the College that transcend disciplinary boundaries, such as those of the Clarke Center and the Community Studies Center.

3. Goal: Sustain professional development activities so that faculty and others may broaden their potential for interdisciplinarity.

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II. Defining Characteristic: Global Perspective

A. Objective: Enhance study abroad and elsewhere in the United States based on our distinctive principle of close integration of the on- and off-campus experiences.

1. Goal: Move to a new partner model for "non-Dickinson" programs and involve all academic disciplines.

2. Goal: Develop abroad experiences beyond the traditional junior year/semester.

3. Goal: Build a comprehensive network of international internship opportunities, focusing on but extending beyond the Dickinson and partner sites. Explore the possibility of course offerings at home and abroad that look at "work" and "vocation" (including the arts, scientific endeavor, public service, etc. in addition to business) in cross-cultural perspective.

4. Goal: Integrate orientation and re-entry more fully into the curricular and residential experience.

5. Goal: Become a center for research and policy related to study abroad. Include research activity (e.g., pre and post-language testing) as part of international program oversight and quality control.

B. Objective: Internationalize the campus beyond study abroad.

1. Goal: Adopt technology that will allow virtual home/abroad programming.

2. Goal: Develop summer certification programs for high school language teachers and other professional groups using our Carlisle campus as well as our centers abroad.

3. Goal: Increase international student enrollment to 10%.

C. Objective: Create international degree opportunities focusing on our abroad partner institutions and affiliates.

1. Goal: Create joint international baccalaureate degrees with our partner institutions.

2. Goal: Develop international masters degree linkages.

D. Objective: Enhance the College's innovative connection of global education with U.S. diversity programming.

1. Goal: Develop a "Global Mosaic" and connect it with the American Mosaic. Enhance the work of the Community Studies Center in support of both.

2. Goal: Provide ongoing support for the Diaspora and Community Studies initiative.

3. Goal: Explore linkages with historically Black colleges and universities, perhaps offering participation in our abroad programs (including faculty immersions) as a dimension of such collaboration.

E. Objective: Evaluate all proposals for new international partnerships in terms of cost and immediate programmatic benefit, acknowledging that no actions should be taken which add to the College's expenses.

1. Goal: Give the highest priority to new programs which are self-funded, or which will replace programs at a similar cost, or which have immediate revenue potential.

2. Goal: Perform financial assessments on all new program proposals prior to approval and evaluate budget and program effectiveness on an annual basis.

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III. Defining Characteristic: Useful Education

A. Objective: Continue to emphasize the power of liberal education to develop a variety of useful skills: analysis, synthesis, writing, speaking, and broad understanding of human behavior and the natural world.

1. Goal: Encourage the articulation of these dimensions of liberal education in all courses and in student social life.

2. Goal: Make a powerful case for the liberal arts in college publications and other communications. Include testimonials from alumni successful in a wide range of fields including the private sector, public and community service, and the arts and sciences.

B. Objective: Enrich the educational program by offering students a range of opportunities within and beyond the limestone walls that connect them with the world of work.

1. Goal: Enhance the Community Experience requirement, including particularly expansion of the College's internship program at home and abroad. Link internships more rigorously to the exploration of professional options.

2. Goal: Encourage service learning opportunities and the connections between course work and involvement in the community. Develop and expand community outreach.

3. Goal: To the greatest extent possible, make students' on-campus jobs into valuable work experience and into educational opportunities for them to explore their vocational skills and interests.

C. Objective: Enhance elements of the curriculum that focus on interconnections between the liberal arts and the world of work.

1. Goal: Continue to strengthen academic programs that make direct connections between liberal education and the world of work.

2. Goal: Guarantee that our courses strongly prepare students for advanced study at the most appropriate and rigorous graduate and professional schools in a range of fields and explore the concept of useful course clusters for various professions.

3. Goal: Develop skill- and career-related certification opportunities for students. These could include certificate programs that connect liberal learning with preparation for specific career fields, including potentially law, medicine, business, information technology, and media.

D. Objective: Invigorate support for students as they move toward career choice. Enhance advising, mentoring, and placement activities. In particular, create a strong and far-reaching network of alumni, parents, and friends of the College to provide career counseling and placement.

1. Goal: Expand the work of the Career Center.

2. Goal: Continue to develop alumni visitation programs, in particular exploring the English department model of a discipline-based version of the Metzger-Conway series. Enhance the Clarke Center Visiting Fellows program of teacher practitioners. Supplement on-campus visits with virtual sessions using distance learning capabilities.

3. Goal: Explore the expansion of advisory boards, drawing heavily on practitioner alumni and others, for selected programs.

E. Objective: Enhance the College's linkage agreements with various high-quality graduate and professional programs. Explore the possibility of five-year bachelors/masters programs, possibly using the College's newly acquired distance-learning capabilities.

F. Objective: Examine the possibility of lifelong learning opportunities that will enhance Dickinson's reputation as a center of service to the community and alumni.

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IV. Defining Characteristic: Citizen-Leaders

A. Objective: Encourage students to exercise the qualities of independence in thought and deed that are the foundation of the American concept of democratic citizenship. Such independence depends both upon the exercise of freedom of choice and upon a willingness to accept responsibility and accountability.

1. Goal: Provide residential facilities which offer students progressively more independent living opportunities as they move through their years at the College. Establish a "ladder of responsibility" in residences from freshman "dorm-like" housing through a variety of transitional living options to apartment-like independent units in the senior year.

2. Goal: Establish the expectation inside and outside the classroom that this community will thrive only when its members routinely accept intellectual risks that challenge their own and others' assumptions, and when they engage a variety of social and cultural environments that lead them beyond that which is initially and personally comfortable to a high level of self-knowledge, mutual respect, and sophistication. These are habits of mind and character that enable mature, independent judgment and social commitment.

3. Goal: Working with students as appropriate, establish behavioral standards and clarify the students' responsibilities for upholding those standards and for finding the appropriate balance between individual freedom and the good of the community. These behavioral standards will inform the Student Code of Conduct, which will include clear and reasonable processes for accountability.

4. Goal: Create a system of Greek life that is safe, sustainable, and focused on the ideals of citizenship, leadership, community, and service - consistent with the mission and vision of Dickinson College.

5. Goal: Foster a deeper understanding of independence among students by instilling in them the notion that true independence flows from a mature and confident sense of self-definition and a consideration of one's abilities, limitations, interests, and values.

B. Objective: Reinforce independence among our students by encouraging the closely related practice of self-government.

1. Goal: Strengthen Student Directed Learning Communities, including Greek-letter organizations, as housing organizations that offer students opportunities for initiative and self-governance.

2. Goal: Increase and strengthen student participation in the existing shared governance system of the College and of student life in particular.

3. Goal: Achieve a better balance of student-initiated and funded and institutionally- initiated and funded social activities and events.

C. Objective: Create an understanding among our students that citizenship is not a solitary practice, but rather is exercised through participation in associations and community with others.

1. Goal: Teach students to accept responsibility for acting with others to identify and solve the community's problems whether local, national, or global.

2. Goal: Develop a rich and varied program of co-curricular and extracurricular activities that bring students together in collaborative endeavors.

3. Goal: Promote the spirit and practice of service and volunteerism inside and outside the College community. Ensure that this is a defining characteristic of student life.

4. Goal: Provide a sufficient number and variety of spaces for students to gather for social and intellectual occasions.

D. Objective: Reinforce Benjamin Rush's commitment to liberal education as a foundation of citizenship by strengthening connections between academic and residential life, applying the skills and knowledge in critical thinking and communication learned in the classroom to life in the wider world of campus and community.

1. Goal: Develop a variety of living-learning communities, such as the Hewlett Diversity Clusters. Encourage residential units informed by academic concerns, especially among the Student Directed Learning Communities. Establish standards of expectation for all group housing that there be a structured educational program among their activities.

2. Goal: Investigate selected ways to co-mingle academic and residential facilities.

3. Goal: Create housing opportunities and programs which use the knowledge and experience students who have studied off-campus bring back on their return.

4. Goal: Establish a variety of both formal and informal occasions for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to profit from the distinctive opportunity offered at a residential liberal arts college to confront and discuss a wide range of often conflicting ideas and experiences. Create an atmosphere where differences of custom, belief, and values can be negotiated openly, vigorously, and respectfully.

5. Goal: Provide space and resources for students to explore and practice spirituality.

E: Objective: Create multiple opportunities for students to learn about and exercise qualities of leadership. Teach students to risk tackling difficult issues, to create vision, and to develop the ability to communicate that vision and guide others to action through reasoned argument and compelling story.

1. Goal: Clearly articulate the College's mission to develop citizen-leaders in ways that make students aware of their historic legacy and encourage them to take up the challenge of leadership in a contemporary nation that continues to reinvent itself.

2. Goal: Encourage a rich array of opportunities for students to exercise leadership in governance, co-curricular and extracurricular pursuits, the life of residential units, and community organizations that tie the campus with the wider world.

3. Goal: Ensure that the criteria for recognition and awards emphasize the quality and depth of students' involvement with the College over the quantity of their participation.

4. Goal: Build an intercollegiate athletics program that provides the best possible opportunities for men and women alike to strengthen their skills in leadership, discipline, teamwork, and perseverance. The experience of participating in intercollegiate athletics should be open to as many students as possible and should provide the opportunity for participants to reach their highest athletic potential. The College should provide the resources to propel selected men's and women's sports to greater competitive success and recognition.

F. Objective: Create a campus culture that is committed to environmental sustainability at all levels.

1. Goal: Integrate environmental accountability into decision-making and planning across all College functions, including construction, renovation, grounds-keeping, maintenance, and purchasing.

2. Goal: Educate students, faculty, and staff about the environmental impact of their actions and life-styles. Support student-led efforts in this area.

3. Goal: Develop a robust system to support personal and institutional commitments to sustainability across all College activities.

4. Goal: Make Dickinson known for the quality of its environmental stewardship, thereby attracting students committed to living in a resource-conscious manner.

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V. Defining Characteristic: Diversity

A. Objective: Create a climate on campus that builds community and encourages open dialogue on issues of intellectual, ethical, and social importance. Teach and model for students the practice of engagement with critical and controversial issues related to difference in our culture. Foster a sophisticated understanding of the balance between human diversity and the commonalities inherent in our shared humanity.

1. Goal: Enhance curricular options that encourage the engagement with diversity across the curriculum and that continue to strengthen course offerings that fulfil the American Cultural Diversity requirement.

2. Goal: Extend our international programs and connect them with U.S. diversity efforts.

3. Goal: Form meaningful relationships with communities beyond our campus, especially minority communities, in ways that enhance our understanding of and experience with American cultural diversity.

4. Goal: Create robust support for social and other on-campus programs that enhance our diversity efforts.

5. Goal: Create an environment that is safe and that affirms all peoples regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

B. Objective: Promote diversity of background among students, faculty and staff.

1. Goal: Recruit and maintain a critical mass of students, faculty, and staff that is diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and religion. Place special emphasis on recruiting African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. Within three years, 10% of the student body should be from these groups; the five-year goal is 12%.

2. Goal: Recruit and maintain a geographically diverse student body, including internationally - recognizing that our core constituency resides in the Middle Atlantic states.

3. Goal: Recruit and maintain a student body with socio-economic diversity.

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VI. Enabling Condition: People

A. Objective: Recruit and maintain a national student body with excellent academic credentials and a diversity of talents, high academic motivation, and eagerness to contribute to the Dickinson community. Our students are the College's highest priority.

B. Objective: Recruit and maintain a faculty with strong credentials that include national aspirations, high standards, vision, and engagement and who are committed to outstanding teaching that is repeatedly informed by research and service and to a teacher-scholar model in which teaching, scholarship, and service are integral parts of a whole career.

1. Goal: Provide salary, benefits, and opportunities for advancement that will attract faculty of the first rank and that will enable them to achieve high levels of accomplishment as teacher-scholars.

2. Goal: Maintain average faculty salaries at the 90^th percentile of the AAUP faculty salary data for Carnegie II.B. schools, aspiring to surpass the 90^th percentile whenever possible within financial constraints.

3. Goal: Provide support for active scholarly and professional development for faculty and continue initiatives, such as the Innovation Fund, that encourage professional change and risk-taking.

4. Goal: Balance goals for additional salary and benefit support and for small class sizes with aspirations to provide additional time for faculty.

C. Objective: Recruit and maintain an administrative and support staff of the highest caliber who are committed to managing and promoting an institution of national aspirations, high standards, vision, and engagement and who are committed to professional development and integrity.

1. Goal: Provide salary, benefits, and opportunities for advancement that will attract administrators and staff of the highest possible quality.

2. Goal: Maintain average administrator and support staff pay levels above the mean of comparable personnel groups nationally and locally whenever possible within financial constraints.

3. Goal: Provide support for professional development and training opportunities that are appropriate to administrative and support staff positions and aspirations.

D. Objective: Review and improve existing structures of institutional governance to ensure that access and open discussion are balanced with the ability to execute decisions for the good of the College in a thoughtful, yet timely manner. Reaffirm a culture of faculty and staff interaction and governance which models in behavior - both individually and collectively - the best traits of leadership and calls for civility, decisiveness, and action.

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VII. Enabling Condition: Financial Stability

A. Objective: Reach break-even in annual operations within five years.

1. Goal: Within five years, reach annual goals of 45% alumni participation in all types of giving.

2. Goal: Within three years, reach annual unrestricted giving of $2 million and $2.5 million within five years. Proportionate adjustments to giving expectations will be made annually based on market trends.

3. Goal: Within three years, reach annual restricted giving of $3 million and $3.5 million within three years. Proportionate adjustments to giving expectations will be made annually based on market trends.

4. Goal: Set expectations for annual contribution levels from individuals on key leadership groups that exceed those for similar groups at peer institutions.

5. Goal: Lower the proportion of students on Dickinson grants to 55% within three years and the reduce the discount rate below 40% within three years.

6. Goal: Expand revenue opportunities for auxiliary operations and establish creative alliances and partnerships. Maximize the use of on- and off-campus facilities and technological systems.

7. Goal: Reduce expenses by increasing efficiencies and by replacing functions, where possible, through outsourcing and critical alliances.

8. Goal: Determine the relationship between the financial viability of existing and proposed programs and their importance to the mission of the College. Decrease or eliminate resources from programs that do not meet our strategic objectives.

B. Objective: As we work to reach break-even in current operations, we must simultaneously balance the following indicators to ensure the long-term financial strength of the College.

1. Goal: Establish the following benchmarks related to assets:
   1. Our available assets should be twice as large as our long-term debt. That is, our expendable net assets-to-debt ratio should be 2X or larger.
   2. Our available assets should cover at least nine months of operating expenses. That is, the primary-reserve ratio should be greater than .75.
   3. Our assets (minus liabilities) should grow by more than inflation. That is, investment returns should be greater than the Consumer Price Index plus 1%.

2. Goal: Increase the endowment to $250 million in three years, including at least $12 million in new gifts within three years, and to $325 million in five years from a combination of market growth and new gifts. Proportionate adjustments to giving and investment return expectations will be made annually based on market trends.

3. Goal: Decrease the current endowment spending rate to 5.5% within five years.

4. Goal: Over the long term, increase endowment investments by a "real rate of return" of at least 1% per year. In other words, reinvestment calculated after removing the costs of custody and management, the rate of inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index), and our spending rate (which is currently 6%) should be greater than 1%. This goal does not include additional gifts to the endowment.

5. Goal: Ensure that all grant proposals include maximum feasible provision for the financial relief of existing operations and that all proposals that create added costs to the College have the approval of the President, Dean, and Treasurer of the College.

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VIII. Enabling Condition: Lifelong Affiliation

A. Objective: To attract eager and talented applicants who are willing to commit to Dickinson.

1. Goal: Develop a distinctive market position for Dickinson and communicate this consistently on a national and international scale to prospective students, parents, current students, alumni, teachers, counselors, Dickinson faculty and staff, and the media.

2. Goal: Attract and enroll talented and diverse students of high academic quality, who have demonstrated the potential to contribute to the life of the College through their involvement and engagement in school and community activities, and who are ready to commit to Dickinson for exploration and self-definition.

3. Goal: Increase the willingness of families across all income levels to invest in a Dickinson education, restoring in the process the balance of aided to full-pay students to 1993 levels (50:50) within five years.

B. Objective: To help students learn, understand, and appreciate the value of what it means to be a Dickinsonian.

1. Goal: Maintain a rich array of social and academic opportunities, which connect students with one another, with faculty and staff, and with alumni in lifelong relationships thereby building a strong connection to and identification with what it means to be a Dickinsonian.

2. Goal: Ensure the highest quality, responsive, consistent, accurate, and timely communications and interactions with students and their parents.

3. Goal: Build loyalty to Dickinson, respect for the College's traditions, and institutional pride by providing opportunities for every student to be an active member of the College community.

4. Goal: Increase the 4-year graduation rate from 75% to 84%, and the 5-year rate from 79% to 88% within five years.

C. Objective: To reinforce alumni pride in the College and their willingness to give something back to Dickinson.

1. Goal: Provide opportunities for alumni to connect with one another and with students and faculty in networks of accomplishment throughout the United States and the world, and to communicate their stories and their needs to one another and to the College.

2. Goal: Keep alumni well informed about the College, its directions, its position among peer institutions, and its needs.

3. Goal: Create programs for alumni that continue to add value to their degree for a lifetime.

4. Goal: Engage alumni in enhancing the future of the College through organized, purposeful, and strategic advisory groups and volunteer programs including career contacts, mentoring, admissions recruitment/prospecting, and fund-raising.

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IX. Enabling Condition: Technology & Information Management

A. Objective: Provide, in a planned and coherent fashion, information systems, communications, and technology with open, transparent access focused on user needs in all sectors of a campus viewed as border-less.

1. Goal: Create effective leadership for technology and information services that is capable of defining directions and setting priorities.

2. Goal: Develop an organizational structure for service and support that is responsive to user needs and emerging technologies.

3. Goal: Stay current in the collection and storage of information that enables all constituencies of the College to transact their business more effectively and efficiently.

B. Objective: Optimize the use of information and technology in the College's teaching, planning, and administrative processes.

1. Goal: Provide a coherent and up-to-date plan for encouraging the Dickinson community to use information and technology.

2. Goal: Design and implement an easily accessible network infrastructure that allows authorized access for the Dickinson community from both on and off-campus.

3. Goal: Establish an environment in which decision-making and instruction more creatively utilize available data and information sources to test hypotheses and to draw conclusions.

4. Goal: Develop a campus culture of self-sufficiency in the use of technology and provide the training and education necessary to make this possible.

5. Goal: Establish a culture that encourages the electronic sharing of information that is easily accessible, accurate, and dependable.

C. Objective: Establish the College as a leader among liberal arts colleges in the use of technology in education.

1. Goal: Provide the environment and resources that foster innovation in integrating technology into the classroom.

2. Goal: Develop an evolving program that will assure that our students develop and apply their technical skills both during and beyond their college years.

3. Goal: Enhance our resources by forming strategic partnerships and making use of outsourcing and application service providers where appropriate.

4. Goal: Create and maintain an aggressive, innovative, and forward-looking environment for the delivery of a liberal arts education appropriate to times of rapid technological change.

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X. Enabling Condition: Visibility

Strategic Objective: Create a broad recognition for Dickinson that raises the national profile of the College with all constituencies as a prestigious, national liberal arts institution of quality and excellence.

A. Objective: Secure the College's stature and distinctive character within the higher education community.

1. Goal: Raise the perception of Dickinson in the academic community as a liberal arts college with the premier program in international education and excellent programs throughout the curriculum.

2. Goal: Create a national reputation for Dickinson, particularly among our peers, as a liberal arts college which is enterprising in thought and deed and which will take the lead in defining the liberal arts for the twenty-first century.

3. Goal: Raise Dickinson's reputation with the best graduate schools and professional schools in the country as a college that prepares its students thoroughly and with sufficient depth for advanced study.

B. Objective: Enhance the College's stature and recognition of its special strengths and distinctive character among critical constituencies in the general public.

1. Goal: Raise Dickinson's national profile as an institution that is consistently engaged with major issues and challenges facing liberal arts colleges and society.

2. Goal: Enhance Dickinson's reputation among employers as a college that teaches its students how to engage issues, to ask the right questions, to look for answers to complex problems, and to thrive with increasing levels of challenge and responsibility in their work environment.

3. Goal: Enhance Dickinson's reputation among high school teachers and counselors through special programs, events, and communications targeted to this audience and create greater name recognition and reputation in key market areas for Dickinson among 13 to 17 year-olds and their parents.

4. Goal: Assure that Dickinson is regarded as the premier national liberal arts institution by those in the region.

5. Goal: Establish a network of awareness, connection, and usefulness to professional media.

C. Objective: Solidify and reinforce awareness of the College's quality, distinctiveness, and potential among the Dickinson community. Build a culture of confidence at Dickinson and create a "college with attitude."

1. Goal: Consistently communicate the College's message (as articulated in the Strategic Plan especially) on campus.

2. Goal: Assure that Dickinson is always on the minds of the extended Dickinson community of trustees, alumni, parents, and friends in positive ways. We must communicate our message and quality in ways that yield greater allegiance to and involvement with the College.

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