WHAT WERE YOUR TOP
PRIORITIES AS YOU BEGAN
YOUR PRESIDENCY?
•••
FIRST, THE STUDENT AND FACULTY POPULATIONS WERE SIM-
PLY NOT AS DIVERSE AS THEY NEEDED TO BE.
If we wanted our
students not just to navigate but to succeed and lead in an increasingly complex, multi-
cultural world, we felt that our campus community needed to be more representative of
that world.
Retention and graduation rates were another area of concern. Survey data indicated
that our students were not always as engaged in their academic work as we expected. Also,
more than 20 percent of our students resided off campus. Most of them were the juniors
and seniors we rely on to set an example for the first- and second-year students. That im-
balance wasn’t healthy for a residential learning community, and it drained energy away
from the campus.
Finally, there was a great deal of deferred maintenance to be addressed, as well as
a clear need for renovations and, in some cases, new buildings. Unfortunately, the endow-
ment and annual giving failed to match up to the College’s needs and ambitions. It was
evident that achieving Skidmore’s highest aspirations would require much higher levels of
funding.
Considering all of these issues together, it was clear to me that we needed a strong
and comprehensive vision that everyone bought into. In 2005, we developed our ten-year
Strategic Plan to guide our transformation, and I think that’s why we’ve seen such signifi-
cant and broadly positive results.
WHY IT MATTERS
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WHY IT MATTERS
