February 2006 Update: Draft Strategic Plan
The Planning Steering Committee, the President's Staff, and President Liebowitz devoted the month of January to engaging members of the College community around an earlier draft of the strategic plan. After considering dozens of e-mail messages and personal communications, discussions held at three additional open planning meetings, and further data and other background information, the Planning Steering Committee prepared a substantially revised draft, Knowledge Without Boundaries: The Middlebury College Strategic Plan. We completed the revision on January 31, just in time for mailing the new draft to members of the Board of Trustees as they were preparing for the February Board meetings.
The Planning Steering Committee presented the draft plan to the Board of Trustees at their general session on Friday, February 10. President Ronald Liebowitz, J.S. Woodward '06, Charlotte Tate, Assistant Director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, and John Elder, Stewart Professor of English and Environmental Studies made formal presentations on behalf of the Planning Steering Committee. These were followed by wide-ranging discussions, both at this meeting, in the subsequent meetings of various Board committees, and in many informal discussions with Board members throughout the weekend.
Moving Toward a Final Strategic Plan
The Planning Steering Committee has been gathering further input and suggestions that respond to the January 31 draft. We are also working with leaders on the Board of Trustees in assembling and responding to the input we expect to receive from Board members. We are developing a few appendices that will provide background information and data relating to the major strategic directions identified in the plan.
In addition to drafting the final version of the plan, we expect to develop processes and procedures for implementing, and for measuring progress with, the 82 recommendations of the plan. President Liebowitz, the Board of Trustees, and the Planning Steering Committee and President's Staff are all committed to ensuring that our plan will not be a document that will just sit on a shelf and gather dust.
While acknowledging that our work is not complete and that the final version of Knowledge Without Boundaries: The Middlebury College Strategic Plan will inevitably differ from our current draft, we are now making the draft available to our broader Middlebury family—alumni, parents, and other supporters—and to Middlebury's "public." We hope that you will take time to review this draft; as you do that, we are confident that you will see in it a reflection of the values and qualities that have made Middlebury College an outstanding institution with a superb standing nationally and internationally. We also believe that you will find a roadmap for our future—a course that will build on Middlebury's enormous strengths as we face even greater challenges in the decades to come.
On behalf of the Planning Steering Committee, I thank you for your generous participation in the planning process which has helped bring us to this point, and for your wonderful loyalty to the College.
John Emerson
Dean of Planning
February 13, 2006