Strategic Planning update: February 2019

To the Williams community,

I’m pleased to share the first in a series of routine monthly updates on strategic planning.

Last month the Coordinating Committee began the intensive work of articulating a process for this effort. It includes defining working groups for our eight areas of focus (see details below) and starting to draft their charges. Here are a few other highlights so far:

• Our first open feedback period, addressing the broad contours of the plan and process, ended on Friday, February 15. We received 63 comments, including four from faculty, four from staff, six from students, and 49 from alumni and families (all submitters could identify one or more roles). These numbers are in addition to numerous email exchanges and conversations with people on campus. Thank you to everyone who weighed in. Many submissions were general statements of support for strategic planning at Williams. Some people also expressed interest in specific working groups or suggested areas of focus. As the working groups take shape we’ll channel your suggestions to the right ones, to ensure that all submissions are carefully considered. You should also feel free to continue adding thoughts and ideas via the comment form on the Strategic Planning website as they occur to you.
• Over the next month the Coordinating Committee will turn to the formation of the eight working groups, each of which will comprise four to six members selected from faculty, students, and staff. The groups will be charged with engaging college stakeholders and gathering information to make sure all voices are heard, through scheduled open meetings and other forms of outreach. Look for details in the next few weeks about how to express your interest in serving on one of these groups. Once the groups are convened, we’ll also share details about how everyone can engage with them.
• I’ll continue a monthly series of updates like this one throughout the spring, and will restart them in the fall. We’re also planning a campus forum in April about the charges for the working groups, and will experiment with a live online event (possibly Facebook Live or Reddit Ask Me Anything) to broaden the conversation. Next fall we’ll host several all-campus planning discussions as the working groups gather data and write their reports, and then in Spring 2020 we’ll organize public fora to review the working group reports and solicit feedback on the draft plan. We’ve posted this high-level timeline to the Strategic Planning site and will add details there and share them via my monthly updates as they become available.