Planning Task Force Under Way

What will Lewis & Clark look like in 2010? How about 2015?

Last fall, President Tom Hochstettler established a Planning Task Force and charged it to prepare a report that represents a community consensus about the long-term priorities that should shape the College’s actions over the next 5 to 10 years. Its 31 members include students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the undergraduate, law, and graduate schools, as well as members of the Board of Trustees.

“President Hochstettler has assembled a wonderfully diverse and democratic cross section of the Lewis & Clark community,” says Paulette Bierzychudek, professor of biology and facilitator of the task force. “We’re all committed to making sure our recommendations represent the collective ideas of all the College’s many constituencies.”

The task force’s work focuses on five areas: academic programs, the student body, student life, institutional structures and processes, and identity/visibility–since the plan must grow out of a clear sense of who the College is and what it wishes to become.

During the fall semester, subgroups of the task force working in each of these areas gathered data and conducted interviews with key individuals. In the first part of the spring semester, task force members tapped faculty, staff, students, and alumni from all three schools to share their ideas in a series of face-to-face and online community forums. The task force is now drafting recommendations and setting priorities among them. The group’s report will be delivered to the Board of Trustees in May.