President announces strategic planning process

Lewis & Clark is embarking on a College-wide strategic planning process aimed at building on the College’s unique strengths and potential to become one of the best and most highly regarded institutions of higher learning in the nation. 

“The first year of my presidency has more than confirmed what I suspected when I was appointed,” said President Barry Glassner, who took office in October 2010. “Lewis & Clark is uniquely positioned to become the place to which people around the country look for what’s most innovative and compelling in higher education, and what best prepares students to meet the needs of a changing world.”

This week, President Glassner announced the formation of working groups that will shape the institution’s future in six key areas. The working groups will pursue the following six objectives:

• Make Lewis & Clark an undisputed leader in international education and global reach.
• Make Lewis & Clark a national leader in student-faculty collaborative research and cooperative professional endeavors. 
• Make Lewis & Clark the undisputed leader in innovative environmental scholarship, education, and engagement.
• Make Lewis & Clark a national leader in providing a full-spectrum liberal education as the gateway to post-baccalaureate educational opportunities and professional life.
• Make Lewis & Clark the place people across the nation bring to mind when they think about outstanding academic institutions in the West—a world-class school in a world-class city.
• Enhance the revenue streams, physical and technological infrastructure, and marketing to support efforts to achieve and maintain leadership and to build new strengths.

Additional details, including the composition of the working groups, can be found on the newly launched Strategic Plan website.

The planning groups will build on the preliminary efforts undertaken this semester by a small strategic planning team. That team, in consultation with the Board of Trustees and other Lewis & Clark planning efforts, identified institutional strengths that can be converted into areas of distinction in which the College becomes a national leader, as well as areas where the College can develop new strengths. That report, “The Journey Forward,” is available in full at the Strategic Plan site.

The newly appointed work groups, comprising faculty, alumni, students, staff, and administrators from all three schools, will work over spring semester to craft specific, realistic, and time- and cost-bound plans for achieving their appointed strategic priorities. Combined into a College-wide strategic plan, these will set the agenda for the years to come, Glassner said. 

Glassner has asked the following three to coordinate the efforts of the working groups: Rob Kugler, professor of religious studies and director of strategic initiatives; Stephen Tufte, associate professor of physics; and Janet Bixby, associate dean in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling.

“Convinced that everyone here has an integral part in the bright future that is ours to grasp, I invite all members of the extended campus community to play a role in moving Lewis & Clark forward and helping us achieve our academic and reputational aspirations,” Glassner said, calling on community members to “give generously of your time and insight as together we set a course for Lewis & Clark’s journey forward.”