The Planning Process
Middlebury initiated a Strategic Planning process in October 2025 as an institution-wide effort and shared opportunity to rearticulate our mission, purpose, and aspirations for the next decade and more. Through this process, we collectively considered who we are and what, together, we are for.
President Ian B. Baucom announced on October 29, 2025, that Jessica Holmes, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Global Health, and AJ Vasiliou, associate professor of chemistry, would lead this effort as co-chairs of a Strategic Planning Steering Committee for the coming year. LeRoy Graham, associate provost, served as project manager.
Steering Committee
The steering committee comprised 13 members, in addition to the two co-chairs and other faculty, staff, students, and trustees from a range of Middlebury backgrounds.
President Baucom charged the steering committee with facilitating a widely collaborative and transparent process in consultation with trustees, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the administrative team. The steering committee invited all of Middlebury to participate in a variety of ways throughout this process, from small group lunches to community gatherings.
They convened in the fall and worked intensively during Winter Term, with the goal of developing recommendations this spring for a new strategic plan that President Baucom brought to the Board of Trustees for its discussion, review, and approval in May 2026.
The board unanimously approved the plan as presented.
Working Groups
In addition to the steering committee, 12 working groups—with representatives from across Middlebury—focused on three overarching themes:
Each of the groups engaged broadly and deliberatively across our community—including with standing faculty, board, staff, and other committees––with the goal of developing a set of priorities and recommendations both bold and feasible: dreams with deliverables.
The steering committee considered those recommendations, seeking to identify which ones should animate our long-term strategic priorities, and then synthesized those highest priorities in a comprehensive plan.
What Is Middlebury For?
Middlebury marked its 225th anniversary on November 1, 2025. As we marked this historic milestone and reflected on our past and present while planning for our future, we collectively engaged a question inspired by the historian Premesh Lalu: What is Middlebury for?
Our strategic planning process allowed us to explore this question—not just for the next decade, but for Middlebury’s larger future ahead. As we launched that work, we took the following questions as the framework for our shared work and thought.
- What is Middlebury for?
- What are we for enduringly?
- What are we for currently and urgently?
- What are we for in this moment and for the future we have this opportunity to shape?