Strategic Planning Update 12/14/11

Transparency Working Group Report, December 13

The Transparency Working Group’s charge is to collect, organize and share feedback from faculty, staff, students, and alumni with the various strategic planning working groups and report the work of the working groups to these constituents.

Here’s what we’ve accomplished so far: 

• Posted regular updates providing information from the steering committee and the five working groups.
• Collected feedback submitted to the strategic planning process through various surveys, the strategic planning website, emails to sp@grinnell.edu, and a variety of open discussions held throughout the fall.
• Compiled and sorted the feedback into documents with comments appropriate for consideration by each working group (alumni engagement, distinctiveness, enrollment, postgraduation success, and teaching and learning). Some feedback appears in more than one working group’s document, as appropriate.
• Sent comprehensive compilations of feedback to the working groups.
• Commissioned short summaries of feedback organized by strategic planning topic. 

We also attach those summaries here in case you’re interested. Please note:

• Collection of feedback is ongoing; feedback summarized here is that which has been collected to date.
• The summaries are NOT comprehensive. They’re intended to provide a general overview of the type of feedback received. They are not a comprehensive list of every comment, and often combine and paraphrase similar comments for concision.
• The themes are not binding. Each summary sorts comments that seem to share a common element into themes. These themes are not intended to limit discussion. Ideas that fall outside these themes are welcome and expected.
• The summaries do not represent the work of the working groups themselves. Working groups are now digesting, winnowing, and processing the feedback —  in both list and summary form — and stirring their own ideas and research into the mix. We’ll share the results of each group’s work in future updates. 

We hope you find the attached summaries interesting. As always, we encourage you to visit the strategic planning website for more updates and information or to submit comments. If you have any questions or comments regarding the strategic planning process, email them to sp@grinnell.edu.