Notes from a Comments Watcher April 2012

As the strategic planning year draws to a close we ponder what sort of document the plan might generate.  The full compilation of ideas, emails, data, minutes of group meetings, and other documents created during the year would accumulate into a large volume.  What we have in mind, however, is a compact statement of strategic aspirations and directions.  The strategic plan document is more likely to be a small manual than an encyclopedia. It will be most useful if it fits in a pocket, or on a Smartphone. It is intended to serve as a guide, with the compact text serving as a spire mounted on an immense construction of ideas and proposals. Alumni of the college might remember that from the 1970s to the 1990s first-year students were provided with a guide called the Vade Mecum, roughly translated from the Latin as “go with me”, that offered advice in planning the students’ first two years of courses.  The Vade Mecum stated, “Even the freshmen who feel most certain of their life-long goals often find after a year or two that they have developed new ambitions.  Therefore, the first years should be used to explore, to discover, and to “keep options open” so the student can go on in the junior and senior years to more advanced work in those areas that prove to be of a continuing interest.”  In other words, it is best to make choices that are strategic and adaptive. The strategic plan is aVade Mecum for the college. As a guide, the strategic plan should encourage creativity within constraints, tipping the community toward transformative moments when normal activity becomes extraordinary and exciting. We hope that a strategic plan might be robust enough to provide guidance for several years. A previous plan was thought to be a five-year plan; the current planning recognizes that planning no longer proceeds in episodes followed by periods of planning dormancy but rather needs to be viewed as a continuous generation of ideas and accommodation to circumstances.  Nevertheless, it may be useful to think of the strategic plan as having a freshman year, one in which the community explores, discovers, and keeps options open, eventually maturing into transformational areas of excellence and distinctiveness.  We cannot force or even predict true transformations, but we may know them by the work they generate. The strategic plan guides us toward work that is challenging, hopeful, and satisfying.  It should not overly direct or constrain.  It is intended to help us make choices that are strategic and adaptive. It requires our collaborative thought and action. So, Vade Mecum.  Go with me. – David Lopatto