Letter from the President

December 23, 2004

To the College Community:

During Winter Term, a Planning Committee for Middlebury's Future will be fully engaged in creating a new strategic plan to guide the College in the coming years. This plan will focus renewed attention on Middlebury's core mission: to provide the strongest learning environment we can to the talented young people who choose to study here. It will identify directions and priorities for the College that will build on the great successes of recent decades. Though the College is now recognized as one of the premier residential liberal arts colleges in the country, and there is a long line at the admissions office, we must work hard to harness and build upon our momentum if the College is to continue to attract excellent students, faculty, and staff. 

In order to deliver on the promises and great expectations created by such momentum, we need to identify, enhance, and bring greater attention to the exceptional mode of education we offer our students—specifically the individualized guidance that faculty provide students. We need to make sure that our external constituencies understand the many ways in which this intensive mode of teaching benefits our students.

Of course the human-intensive mode of education at Middlebury is not limited to the undergraduate college. Our planning needs to focus, too, on our internationally-renowned Language Schools, the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad, the Broad Loaf School of English, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. These non-baccalaureate programs are distinctive and have enhanced foreign language and literary education at all levels across the country and throughout the world. We must be sure to create the conditions under which these programs can continue to grow and flourish so they will retain their preeminence.

Since the completion of the 1992 Long-Range Plan, Middlebury has undergone significant change. The undergraduate student body on the Middlebury campus has grown from around 2,000 students to 2,350, the faculty has increased by about 25 FTEs, and the staff, too, has expanded substantially to meet the needs of the institution's programs. We have increased the number of our Schools Abroad to seven, and sites at those seven Schools to nineteen, raised enrollments in our summer programs by approximately 20 percent, and added a new Language School (Portuguese). During the life of the 1992 Plan, the College has completed major building projects, including: the Center for the Arts, Chip Kenyon Arena and the Natatorium, McCardell Bicentennial Hall, Ross Commons, Atwater Commons, and the new library. The curriculum has become more international and interdisciplinary in its focus, and the Commons System has begun to enrich student life.

The growth of the College and its facilities has strengthened our curriculum and programming, even as it has inevitably generated new challenges for administrators and managers. Our physical setting and facilities are second to none among our peer colleges, and in looking to the future we must plan and act as good stewards of those resources. But we cannot allow ourselves to become distracted from our core educational mission. We must continue to develop a superior environment for learning, and we must acknowledge and support the very able and committed people whose work is integral to this mission. This support for the "human dimension" of the College means: (1) ensuring more and better time for faculty to share their expertise and passion for learning and their subject matter with students; (2) lowering the financial barriers so all qualified students can attend Middlebury with less indebtedness; and (3) providing the most imaginative and effective faculty and staff development programs to ensure those working at the College are current in their fields so they may contribute their skills and work to making the College's educational atmosphere richer and more rewarding.

The planning process will directly involve many people from throughout the College community. I anticipate that it will be at least as intense as previous planning processes, but of somewhat shorter duration; I hope that our work can be completed within a calendar year. To accomplish this will require many task forces, with each one focusing on a specific area, question, or challenge that cuts across departmental lines. For example, one task force will focus on Middlebury's curriculum; another will carefully evaluate the composition of the student body, our admissions process, and our financial aid programs; and two others will focus on professional development programs for our faculty and staff. These and other task forces, together with a core steering committee, will constitute the Planning Committee for Middlebury's Future. I expect the task forces to be fully engaged with a broad cross section of the College community to consider the advice and perspectives of members of Middlebury's off-campus constituents—alumni, parents, and trustees (information about how our off-campus constituents can provide input into the process will be made available in early January).

The task forces will contribute their findings to the steering committee, whose role will be to assemble, prioritize, integrate, and present to the Board of Trustees for its consideration a plan that will chart the College's course in the coming years. Many of the suggestions the task forces make will have implications for our resources, both human and financial, and these implications will need to be measured as we set about the task of assigning priorities that will shape the College's future agenda.

Following consultations with Faculty Council, Staff Council, the Student Government Association, and many faculty and staff colleagues, I have asked the following members of the College community to serve on the Steering Committee, and they have accepted my invitation.

Sincerely,

Ronald D. Liebowitz
President of Middlebury College