February 12, 2016

Dear Members of the Connecticut College Community,

As you know, the strategic planning committee spent the fall term listening to your ideas about the issues and priorities that should guide the College over the next five to ten years. We received feedback through open forums, idea walls, a confidential online survey, and nearly 100 individual and small-group meetings with faculty, staff, students, alumni, trustees, and friends of the College. In this new semester, as we enter the next phase of our strategic planning, I am writing to ask for your views on the committee’s findings so far.

Our consultants at Keeling & Associates have analyzed the results of the feedback in a set of exhaustive reports, executive summaries, and visual diagrams that chart out the major themes that emerged. The findings are quite telling, and I encourage you to look at them. A summary of the most prominent themes can be found on a new page on the Strategic Planning website. Those of you who would like to delve more deeply can find the full suite of reports here.

The work of the coming months will be to turn these findings into an actual plan, and once again we seek your input. Over the next three to four weeks, you will be hearing from members of the Strategic Planning Committee who would like to know your reactions to the data. Do you think the summaries reflect the most important issues for the College, or are there other matters that should be on the table? Which of the themes deserve the most emphasis, and why? Are there specific initiatives or programs that deserve attention? And to what end? What are the broader goals that the College should be trying to achieve through this plan?

As before, we hope to hear from as many of you as possible. The planning conversations last semester generated a robust response, and I hope you will continue to share your time and your wisdom in the coming weeks. Our future success depends on it. Thank you for your continued engagement with this process. I look forward, with your help, to crafting a plan that reflects our collective dreams and aspirations for this remarkable place of learning.

Yours,
 
Katherine Bergeron
President