Engaged Liberal Learning:
The Plan for Skidmore College, 2005-2015

The College We Aspire to Become: Strategic Goals and Priorities

The preceding characterization of Skidmore College represents not only a description but also a promissory note issued to every new student upon matriculation. Each of them (and their parents) arrives with the legitimate expectation that this obligation will be redeemed in full. We certainly do not say to any individual matriculant, "It's all right with us if you fail at Skidmore: your success doesn't really matter." Instead, we begin with the assumption that each admitted student can meet the challenges we present and — with the proper commitment, effort, and assistance — will join the ranks of Skidmore alumni. We regard matriculation as the beginning not of a four-year relationship but rather of a lifelong relationship between a student and the extended Skidmore community. Even so, despite our best intentions, we must acknowledge that for too many of our students Skidmore remains a promise unfulfilled. The gap between the aspirations of our Mission Statement and our actual performance provides both a significant challenge and our most important opportunity.

Our overarching objective, therefore, is to become a College that fully realizes the objectives of our Mission: one that inspires, challenges, and supports the highest levels of excellence for all our students, not just for some or even many of them — as evidenced by their achievements in realizing the values of engaged liberal learning while at Skidmore and expressing them throughout their lives. The Skidmore we envision expects that an intellectually rigorous, transformative educational experience will lead to graduates whose achievements at Skidmore will launch them into the next phase of their lives, who are prepared to function effectively in the complex and increasingly diverse world of the 21^st Century, and who understand and embrace the responsibilities of living as informed, responsible citizens. Moreover, we expect our alumni to remain deeply connected to one another and to Skidmore as a continuing source of inspiration and support.

More specifically, we seek to become an academic community in which minds are inspired:

• A College that involves students immediately and passionately in a life-altering learning experience, from their first days on campus — a process that leads to significant individual academic achievement by the time of graduation, along with demonstrable personal development that will position all our alumni to embark with assurance on the next phase of their lives.
   
• A College that offers its students a balanced curriculum, reflecting strength across the arts, humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and selected pre-professional programs, one that enables its students and faculty to make insightful connections across disciplinary boundaries.
   
• A College that expects every student to develop increased appreciation of the value of difference in human society, in which each student progresses in his or her ability to interact successfully with persons of unfamiliar background, and that provides every graduate an entrée to the understanding necessary to function effectively not only as a citizen of our country but also as a citizen of our increasingly interconnected world.
   
• A College that expects responsible behavior of everyone within our community, that empowers and inspires all of our students to make the choices required of informed, responsible citizens throughout their lives, and that itself acts as a responsible corporate citizen.
   
• A College that values creativity and excellence in the research of our faculty, expects it in the collective decisions that determine the course of our institution, and insists on it in the work of our students.
   
• A College that increasingly is recognized for its role as a leading national liberal arts college in advancing the cause of engaged liberal learning within our national community and world at large — both through the actions of our alumni and through the College's own contribution to the advancement of knowledge.

At the heart of our mission — and so of this Plan — is the education of our students in the broad tradition of liberal learning. This mission per force assigns a central role to the teacher-scholar-citizens who constitute the Skidmore faculty. Through their teaching and mentoring our professors engage our students actively in their own education. More broadly, by modeling the way an educated person examines, challenges, critiques, and synthesizes existing beliefs and creates new ones, the Skidmore faculty communicates to our students what it means to be liberally educated and capable of acting responsibly in the world. Though teaching, mentoring, and service tend to be their most visible activities on campus, the members of our faculty were initially drawn to the academic life through their own passionate scholarly engagement with a field of study. It is crucial for a faculty member, across the span of an entire career, to continue her or his scholarly engagement by maintaining active membership in an extended disciplinary community. Without a foundation of continuing professional engagement, one's teaching cannot reflect the current state of an evolving area of study. Without the sharp give-and-take in the scrutiny of one's own work by professional peers who are in a position to evaluate it, one all too quickly can lose the intellectual edge required to advance knowledge and to challenge one's students. Most importantly of all, in order to inspire one's students, one first must be inspired oneself; unless one continues to grapple with issues in one's field that one defines as important, one's scholarly passion can fade. The sources of such inspiration are manifold, but among these the stimulation of active membership in a learned community ranks high. Thus our Mission Statement affirms that "underpinning the [College's] entire enterprise are faculty members' scholarly and creative interests, which inform their teaching and contribute, in the largest sense, to the advancement of learning." Accordingly, this Plan recognizes and supports the need for every faculty member to maintain an active agenda of research or creative work.

Though grounded in present reality, the Skidmore we envision will entail significant evolutionary development. To enable all of our students to live up to their potential, we must challenge ourselves to measure up fully to Skidmore's most cherished ideals, to meet our own highest standards of excellence in all that we do: in teaching, in research and creative work, in administration, in College governance, in fundraising, in the management of our resources, in the maintenance of our campus, in all of the ways that everyone involved with Skidmore College supports our developmental aspirations for our students. In that spirit, we expect our administrators and staff members to understand their specific contributions to the College's mission and to meet the highest professional standards in discharging their duties. We expect each member of our faculty to embrace fully the responsibilities of being a teacher-scholar-citizen at Skidmore — as accomplished educators, productive scholars and artists, effective mentors, and engaged institutional contributors. And we must support them at the highest levels possible in doing so.

To bring our shared vision to reality — to make our own most creative educational thinking matter across our community — we call upon our tradition of audacity, invoke our powers of imagination, and prepare to focus our efforts as never before. One of our greatest assets is the passion for our mission that characterizes us at our best, that is shared by so many members of the extended Skidmore community, and that has led us in the past to our greatest achievements. We reaffirm our sense of shared purpose and commit our collective energy to the task of achieving new levels of excellence and recognition — taking us ever closer to realizing the bold promise that is Skidmore College