When it comes to building on existing strengths, there is potential for controversy. "Anytime you pull programs and departments out of the landscape . . . you risk offending the people that you don't mention," Adams said. "It's tricky. But the truth is you can't be distinctive in everything you do. You can be very good, and we don't want to do anything that we're not very good at. So this is not condemning the rest to mediocrity; I think you continue to have very high standards in all those places where you're investing time and energy.
"But as a profile matter and as a matter of public perception, I think we have some opportunities to be even more distinctively good in particular places, because of what's gone on here in the past and because of where we are--Maine."
So, after extensive investigation and deliberation, the plan includes a half-dozen initiatives to enrich the academic profile:
Student Life and Culture
While the overall planning process found a very strong institution with much worth celebrating and preserving, there were, inevitably, areas where planners found room for improvement. "The strong feeling," said Adams, "is that between the academic experience and the social experience there's too much disconnection." The top two goals in the student life section are to "enhance the intellectual climate and atmosphere on campus" and "integrate more effectively student academic, residential, and social experiences."
Plainly put, planners were candid that student social life at Colby could be better, and more than a dozen initiatives are listed for improving the student experience and addressing social and cultural programming.
Among them: increasing the use of common space around campus along with renovations and expansion of Cotter Union to make it a true hub of student activities.
Though a separate part of the plan deals with increasing, sustaining and supporting diversity, the section on student life and campus culture acknowledges the need to improve the campus climate for students of color, international students and other under-represented groups as Colby becomes a more diverse institution.
Adams characterized the issues around social life as an instance where the environment has changed. "Part of it has to do with the diversity of students we're attracting, because a lot of students express disinterest in forms of social life that may have been more characteristic of Colby a generation ago," he said. "So there's some dissatisfaction there. But even among more traditional students there's evident dissatisfaction with the nature and quality of the social interaction on campus. We've got to think cleverly about that."
Initiatives are aimed at enhancing the intellectual climate outside of classrooms; better integrating students' academic, residential and social experiences; providing a richer array of social and cultural programs; advancing diversity; reducing the role of alcohol as an organizing force in social life; improving the quality of opportunities for developing leadership skills; and promoting a safe and secure campus.
