A Strategic Plan by Stephen Collins '74
 

To catch the spirit of the planning initiative, revisit 1999 for a moment. The economy is a juggernaut. The dot-com bubble is still expanding and shows no sign of bursting. Distance learning is going to make residential colleges obsolete, some cyber-soothsayers predict. For-profit universities are gaining momentum, and increasing pressures toward professional preparation with a more vocational approach have reinvigorated the old debate about whether liberal arts education is relevant. As Adams pointed out at his inauguration, only about 2 percent of the 14 million students in U.S. colleges and universities are enrolled in residential liberal arts colleges like Colby.

"The environment, much more now than it was ten or fifteen years ago, is telling us "don't take it for granted,'" Adams said.

In the brave new information age and with the pace and the scope of change accelerating, is Colby an anachronism? If not, where and how can it be improved? Those questions defined the big picture of the planning process.

Said Adams: "I think the essential elements are, one, the reaffirmation of what we're doing and of the character of the institution as a residential, undergraduate liberal arts institution. Now in one way that seems obvious and maybe anticlimactic, but there are lots of things in the environment that are raising questions about that. So one of the major points of this plan, as it's turned out, is to reaffirm who we are.

"The second part was to figure out how to do what we do even better in an atmosphere and context in which people are questioning both the role of higher education generally but also the role of the liberal arts college more specifically."

That--"how can we do what we do even better"--is the point of the 33-page document and all of the various appendices that make up The Strategic Plan for Colby. The plan applies that question in three major spheres--academics, student life/campus culture, and buildings and grounds on campus. Broadening and deepening diversity at Colby is a fourth major component of the plan.

Academic
With academics first and foremost, the plan has two major emphases:

  • pursuing innovations that will keep Colby's overall approach to and philosophy of liberal learning fresh and powerfully engaging, and

  • building on existing and recognized organic strengths in ways that will make Colby's academic profile more distinctive.

    Adams listed concerns for the planning group as it considered potential innovations related to the academic program:

  • preserving Colby's culture of teaching;

  • making sure we're doing the things we say we're doing; that is, conveying and teaching the essential intellectual capacities and competencies that we value;

  • continuing our commitment to international education;

  • injecting a more significant dimension of project-based learning and service learning in the curriculum; and

  • doing things to strengthen some of the core programs through which liberal learning occurs.

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