Plans for Midd 2012 on the way

Author: Annie Onishi

With the Planning Committee for Middlebury's Future nearing the final quarter of its yearlong strategic planning process, Dean of Planning and Secretary of the College John Emerson said early this week that parts of the strategic plan may be released as soon as next month.

While the greater Middlebury College community was absent over the summer recess, the Strategic Planning committees established by President Ronald D. Liebowitz and led by Emerson worked to follow the strategic planning road map laid out in January of this year. According to a September update from Emerson, the Planning Steering Committee and the President's staff met "on 19 occasions for a total of 46 hours" this summer in order to further advance the progress of the Strategic Planning process.

The Committee recently released a draft of the College's new mission statement. The revised statement reads, "Middlebury College seeks to offer undergraduate students an excellent education in the liberal arts and sciences, and to do so within a diverse and inclusive residential community that vigorously engages the world beyond our campus." The statement goes on to note the importance of the Language Schools, Schools Abroad, Bread Loaf School of English and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference to the undergraduate College. The mention of these schools is an addition to the current mission statement, which focuses exclusively on the undergraduate College.

Although the Committee was honing the College's Mission Statement all summer, it has not yet completed a full draft of the Committee's strategic plan. Emerson cannot confirm the release date of the final plan, but said, "My best guess now is that we will release parts of the plan and invite commentary on those. I believe that some sections, perhaps half of the plan, may be released during October."

According to Emerson, members of the Middlebury community will then have a chance to offer input and provide suggestions for any revisions. "In October, President Liebowitz and the planning group will have open meetings to discuss various parts of the plan, certainly including the area of mission. One of these meetings will be a town meeting and it will be an early evening meeting so as to make it accessible to students."

This revision process is ongoing between the five working groups of the Planning Steering Committee. Emerson compared the process to "writing a senior thesis, except that it is a group project." He added, "The process will continue as we respond to the reactions and advice we get from members of the College community."

Originally, the entire process was supposed to have been completed by now. Of the delay, Emerson said, "[It] has to do with the difficulties in carrying out the very important tasks of prioritizing major and expensive initiatives. We need solid data in order to do that well, and it takes considerable time to pull it all together. Many people in the College's financial offices and the facilities office are hard at work helping us do that."

While the bulk of the work of the Strategic Planning Process will be over after the final plan is released, organization and implementation of the plan will take coordination and time, and will be monitored by Liebowitz and his staff. According to Emerson, certain parties including the Board of Trustees and the Budget Office must approve most proposed changes before the College acts on the suggestions.

The Strategic Planning Process is one of long-term significance to the College, and though many changes will take effect in the near future, most of the larger, more thematic changes will probably not have a direct impact on the lives of current Middlebury students.

Emerson said, "Frankly, few of the biggest changes are likely to affect current juniors and seniors. Our entering first-year students will probably feel the impact of some of the changes. Other changes will only come, say, 10 years down the road. That seems to be the nature of strategic planning."

Despite the longer term-significance of this process, a few changes are already being made. Of the more immediate changes, Emerson said, "We are working on a plan to provide stronger support for student research and to help identify exciting research opportunities for students. As another example, we are identifying ways to give Middlebury's dedicated staff members a clearer voice in processes that affect their work environment, their benefit programs and other policies that affect them."

The Strategic Planning Process officially began last January and is scheduled to end this December. The timeframe of the plans will guide the agenda of Middlebury from 2006 until 2012. In order to fully address every issue, several task forces were created to examine specific "charges," and to generate ideas and suggestions. Each task force had a liaison to the Planning Steering Committee, which, in turn, worked with Liebowitz and members of the senior administration to pool information, produce a plan to consider the issues raised by the task force and then prioritize them.

At the outset of the process last year, Liebowitz made it clear that his Strategic Planning Process would be more focused on the people of the Middlebury community, as opposed to the planning of his predecessor, President John McCardell, Jr., which focused on infrastructure and the "physical plant."

With that theme in mind, Emerson commented on what he thinks will be the most progressive change to come out of this process. "I suspect [it] will either be changes to enhance the socio-economic diversity, and other forms of diversity, in the student body, or else it will be the changes made to enhance the close and intense relationships between Middlebury students and faculty."