President Conner and administrators share updates with Skidmore staff
During the second staff meeting of the spring semester, President Marc Conner and other College administrators offered updates on the February Board of Trustees meetings; the Strategic Action Agenda for this academic year; the Campus Master Planning process; diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; admissions applications; Human Resources initiatives; and recent changes to the College’s COVID-19 policies.
To begin, President Conner provided a brief overview of the Board of Trustees meetings held last month, during which a number of key topics were discussed. “The Board continues to be very positive about what's happening on campus and highly engaged,” he said, in particular noting that the Board’s third major diversity, equity, and inclusion-facilitated training within the past four years took place. “That is remarkable, and it also shows the work of the new DEI Committee that the board formed a year-and-a-half ago as part of our Racial Justice Initiative.”
A significant focus of conversations with the Board of Trustees remains the Campus Master Planning process, President Conner said. He noted that the three major areas of emphasis emerging in the Campus Master Plan are addressing the need for additional residential spaces and renovating existing residential spaces over the next decade; attending to academic needs, from the ongoing move into the Center for Integrated Sciences to looking at other new and renovated teaching and learning spaces; and improving and creating new spaces for the benefit of health, wellness, fitness, and athletics opportunities at Skidmore.
“This collaborative process doesn't end in May,” President Conner said. “When the Board approves the plan, the Campus Master Plan gives us a menu of possibilities for our campus, but it doesn't give us the priority. It doesn't give us the details and it doesn't tell us how we're going to fund them. All of that work will happen in the strategic planning, and then the next capital campaign, and that's going to proceed in this same way — very inclusive, very collaborative, with clear communication.”
Strategic Action Agenda
The Strategic Action Agenda (SAA), an annual document that outlines five key goals for the year, has been endorsed unanimously by the Board of Trustees’ Strategic Planning Committee and by the Institutional Policy and Planning Committee (IPPC). Feedback from the Skidmore community will be welcomed in the weeks ahead.
Four of this year’s goals are a continuation of those set last year: the ongoing successful execution of the academic year during this time of COVID-19; continued progress in fulfilling the objectives of the Racial Justice Initiative; ongoing efforts to address the projected long-term budget deficits; and completing the creation of a new Campus Master Plan.
The fifth goal, which is new to the SAA this year, is the evaluation of, and any revisions to, Skidmore’s sexual and gender-based misconduct (SGBM) and Title IX policies and procedures. “As you know, this really comes about in response to student activism and worries about Title IX and SGBM in the fall,” President Conner said. “I want us to be, instead of reactive, more proactive the rest of this year, and the work that Joel Aure and Adrian Bautista and many others are leading — this very comprehensive review of our policies and procedures — is a great help in that.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Joshua Woodfork, vice president for strategic planning and institutional diversity, provided updates on upcoming DEI initiatives and programming.
Through the Liberal Arts Colleges Racial Equity Leadership Alliance (LACRELA), which Skidmore joined as a founding member in 2020 as part of the Racial Justice Initiative, Skidmore is proceeding with the second phase of a three-part series of racial climate surveys.
“Last year we surveyed students, this year we're going to survey staff, and next year we'll survey faculty,” Woodfork explained, emphasizing that surveys help us to learn where we are, where we have work to do, and what challenges we face.
Skidmore staff will be asked to take the survey between Tuesday, March 22, and Thursday, April 21, to reflect on their experiences in areas such as workplace mattering and affirmation, racial learning and literacy, encounters with racial stress, institutional commitment to racial diversity and inclusion, and the impact of external environments.
“I would really like us to aim to try to get 75% participation, which would be really meaningful,” said Woodfork. “We had the highest participation rate for students in the country, and I think we could have the highest one for staff as well.”
Woodfork also announced that In It 6 will take place April 4-8 after being postponed from last fall, and In It 7 will be held in October. He welcomes programming ideas and collaboration from Skidmore staff and faculty who would like to participate in the planning process.
Human Resources
Interim Human Resources Director Sarah Delaney Vero spoke to the status of Skidmore’s employee compensation study and exploration of flexible work.
“The staff portion of the compensation assessment is basically completed in terms of the matching of our particular positions with market and industry data,” Vero said, adding that the College is in a great position to be able to implement individual changes by the beginning of the fiscal year. Additional information will be shared soon, she said, and HR is also looking to host an upcoming forum to present some of the results and collect feedback.
After a pilot program of the flexible work benefit was conducted over the winter break, and was unexpectedly extended in January due to the Omicron variant, Human Resources is currently following up with supervisors to obtain their input on how the program went. The next stage of the process will be to hold a feedback forum for all employees, and more information will be shared via email.
Admissions
Mary Lou Bates, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, reported another strong year for Admissions, which has received over 13,000 applications. That record number, she said, includes a 13% increase in domestic applications and a record number of early decision applications. “Over half of the class is expected to be accepted Early Decision,” Bates said.
Also of note, she said, is that the amount of financial aid requested has held steady this year after a few years of increasing.
Admissions is continuing to offer virtual programming options for prospective students and their families, but it will also host three on-campus Accepted Candidates Day programs on April 11, 15, and 22.
COVID-19 policy updates
For the final agenda item, President Conner reflected on and invited questions and comments about the recently announced changes to the College’s COVID-19 policies, which now allow for optional masking throughout campus and outline a conclusion to required regular PCR testing on campus, among other updates.
“There’s so much information and there’s no one perspective,” he said of his March 3 email message regarding the changes. “I wanted to emphasize our fundamental principles: health and safety of community, following the science, providing the full educational experience to our students, and constant communication. Those principles will stay in place long after COVID.”
One of the key reasons for Skidmore’s success is the caring nature of our community, President Conner said, for each of us experiences COVID in different ways. With that — and the dramatically changing COVID landscape — in mind, the March 3 messages to the community included a new email address for providing input on COVID policies, covidfeedback@skidmore.edu.
“I think this is one of our important moments,” President Conner said. “These are going to be difficult discussions at times, and with choice comes the challenge of working out that choice in community. So again, I think that respectful, supportive ethos that we have exhibited so well is going to continue to be so important as we move forward.”
Additional detailed guidance regarding visitors, gathering, testing, and dining for the second half of the spring semester was still to be released by the COVID-19 Logistics Working Group within the week. Skidmore does currently permit visitors to campus without seeking confirmation of vaccination status, but departments, programs, and offices of the College may request proof of vaccination.