Update on the Strategic Planning and Big Ideas Process

Dear Colleagues,

Over the summer, Executive Council and I made great headway on our strategic planning efforts. We will need your thoughtful input to finalize the plan.

On September 5, we will launch the review process with a special event in Council Chamber at 11 a.m. and via Zoom. We’ll be sharing with you a plan that outlines our draft strategic imperatives for the next five years.

In addition to the full text of the draft plan, we’ll provide an online feedback form as well as a schedule of other events and opportunities where you can give input throughout September and early October. Please make time to be a part of our process.

In late October, I plan to deliver the plan to the Board of Trustees for their approval, so we can get started on our initiatives as soon as possible.

I must gratefully acknowledge the nearly thirty Big Ideas proposals we received at the end of May. These planning efforts amounted to hundreds of pages of silo-breaking thinking that represent untold hours of collaboration among faculty and staff. As we reviewed these Big Ideas, Executive Council found plenty of overlap that suggested broad areas of focus. When combined with our draft themes and sessions with EAB last year, these Big Ideas documents were invaluable in helping us construct the draft strategic imperatives.

Pending the Board of Trustees approval of the strategic plan in October, we’ve postponed asking Big Ideas creators to refine and further develop proposals. In the meantime, however, we plan to share with faculty and staff a repository of the proposals on September 5 as well. The good work represented in these proposals is inspiring and beneficial, and we’ll return to them later in the fall.

Strategic planning efforts are more important than ever. In the current higher education landscape and in our own budget context, we need to be focusing on big ideas, our distinctiveness, and strategy. We must harness our collective energy, creativity, talent, time and resources toward developing and implementing a plan that doubles down on the qualities of Lewis & Clark that are most distinctive and special.

We will need all of you to participate, so be on the lookout for more information on September 5 on when and how to get involved.

Sincerely,

Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan

President