'Strategic Renewal' reframes priorities for next five years
College announces lowest fee increase in 40 years
Continuing to focus on making a Skidmore education as accessible as possible, the College recently announced a series of moves as part of its longer strategic plan. Most importantly, the College announced the smallest increase in its comprehensive fee - 1.9 percent -- in more than four decades. Falling below both the CPI and the Higher Education Price Index, it was made possible by a series of rigorous budget decisions aimed at controlling costs across the campus.
This effort complements Skidmore's continuing investment in financial aid, which will grow by about 11 percent ($3.3 million) for the coming year, bringing that budget to an estimated $34 million. The average grant award for the more than 1,000 students receiving financial aid will be $27,100. This initiative has helped the College enroll the most accomplished and diverse first-year class in its history.
How can the College enhance the already considerable value - across all the many dimensions of that term - of a Skidmore degree for all of our graduates?
That's the essential question that President Philip A. Glotzbach asked in a series of on- and off-campus 'town hall' meetings held during the 2009-10 academic year.
More than 200 members of the faculty, staff, student body attended the on-campus meetings, and Trustees participated in a similar discussion. Nearly 500 alumni and parents attended sessions hosted by the College in eight cities.
The result is Strategic Renewal: Reframing Our Priorities at the Midpoint of the Strategic Plan, a 13-page document issued by President Glotzbach in mid-May, 2010, that draws on these many conversations plus the thinking of the President's Cabinet, the Institutional Policy and Planning Committee (the IPPC), the Trustees, and others from campus and beyond. The purpose of the document is to reframe the College's approach to achieving its institutional goals during the Strategic Plan's final five years.
Strategic Renewal " reaffirms the basic elements of our mission as a student-centered liberal arts
college," President Glotzbach writes. "It draws our attention to those characteristics
that differentiate us from competitor institutions. And most importantly, it provides
a heuristic framework to guide our strategic choices going forward - the actions we
will take to continue implementing the Plan's four strategic goals."
In Strategic Renewal, President Glotzbach describes steps taken by the College to confront the economic
crisis that began in fall, 2008, including a salary freeze, an early retirement initiative,
and a strategic hiring freeze that has reduced the College's payroll by approximately
55 positions. Throughout this process, he notes, "we also increased our community's
strategic literacy: our shared understanding that every decision to deploy our precious
resources ? whether time, energy, or financial assets ? represents a strategic investment
and must be evaluated as such."
Declaring that "we are and will remain a student-centered institution," he praises
the new Goals for Student Learning and Development -- developed by the Committee for Educational Policies and Planning (CEPP) and the
Faculty Assessment Coordinator and endorsed by the faculty in December, 2009 ? for
"naming specific expectations for student achievement that span the many dimensions
of the intellectual and personal development students experience during their time
with us."
That statement, he writes, "provides additional direction for curricular development.
It also positions us to demonstrate in new ways the value of a Skidmore education
through effective assessment that will encompass not only the undergraduate years
but also the lives of our alumni."
Strategic Renewal contains a substantial discussion of the College's differentiating attributes, of
which President Glotzbach details eight. It also contains a section, titled "Transition
and Transformation," in which he outlines a new institutional commitment ? still grounded
in the core values of a liberal arts education ? to better prepare students to move
capably into careers.
"We must become clearer about the knowledge, abilities, and skills they need to make
this transition, and we can be more creative in developing opportunities for students
to acquire them across their time at Skidmore," he writes. "We need to start more
of these efforts to facilitate our student's transition out of college within their
very first year at Skidmore and then continue them across their undergraduate careers."
Acknowledging that the undergraduate college experience represents just one moment
in the longer passage from late adolescence into early adulthood, a process that begins
in high school and extends into one's mid-30s, President Glotzbach challenges the
campus to apply the concept of "transformation" more broadly than the College has
up to now.
"How would our curricula, courses, and mentoring practices change if we were to situate
them in the context of this larger developmental arc? What resources can we develop
to help us answer this question? How would our relationship to our graduates change
if we were to develop a more detailed sense of their needs, say, two years, five years,
and ten years out from commencement?"
Strategic Renewal also strongly reaffirms the College's focus on developing several key capacities
within our students, which he sees as critical to their success beyond college. These
include a high level of scientific literacy, the ability to function as engaged and
responsible members of their communities, and the ability to interact effectively
and collaboratively with individuals across a wide range of cultural differences.