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

Executive Summary

Colleges and universities tend to focus either on their past or on their future. While Skidmore honors, takes pride in, and builds upon the legacy of its past, we are accustomed to thinking in the future tense: about our hopes for our students, changes to be made in our curriculum, or a greater role to be played by our College throughout higher education and in the world at large. Even our declaration that creative thought matters orients us toward a distant horizon: The concept of creativity itself points to a moment that does not yet exist — when something hidden will be revealed, a plan realized, a quandary resolved through an imaginative approach. Creativity threatens the status quo and so entails risk. Yet Skidmore has always invited change and embraced risk. Because of the dedication, foresight, and audacity of so many who have come before us, the College has made enormous progress across its first century. Throughout our history, we have challenged ourselves to make no small plans — to make no ordinary choices — and we do so still today.

Since our founding, Skidmore College has prepared generations of young women and, more recently, young women and men, to become both successful, productive citizens and personally fulfilled human beings. We also have embraced the education of a smaller cohort of non-traditional students who affirm the power of liberal learning to illuminate both their professional and personal lives. In both cases, we attract students who are sophisticated, eclectic, collaborative, creative, and adventurous. We offer them a cosmopolitan and challenging institutional culture, one infused with opportunities to participate in and appreciate the visual and performing arts. We emphasize the importance of creative thought and its practical applications across our curriculum — from the natural sciences, to pre-professional majors, to the humanities, and social sciences, to the visual and performing arts. We encourage our students to experiment, to explore multiple areas of inquiry, and to pursue their individual passions. 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. A Skidmore education provides the foundation in both the cognitive skills and the personal maturity required to excel in both the workplace and in the polity of the 21^st Century. Most importantly, it offers the resources for composing a sustainable life as a moral being in a world where the ethical signposts periodically seem to have been knocked flat.

The members of our faculty take justifiable pride in cultivating our students' intellectual and personal excellence and curiosity; others within the extended Skidmore community take similar pride in their contributions to students' success. Indeed, one of our historic strengths has been to awaken previously unrecognized interests and talents, suggesting new possibilities to students who have not yet appreciated — much less risen to — their potential. Traditional and non-traditional students alike report that Skidmore has enabled them to accomplish objectives and grow personally to an extent impossible to predict when they entered the College. We hear in the testimony of our alumni, from the observations of appreciative parents, and through our own experience that our best students — those who take full advantage of what they find at Skidmore today — receive an educational experience second to none.

The preceding characterization 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 — 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

• 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.

This Plan establishes the framework to make the choices required to maintain our forward momentum and, above all, to realize our aspirations. We have identified four ambitious Goals, together with the Priority Initiatives intended to realize them. Some of these Initiatives incorporate work that is already underway; others will require new investments of time, effort, or funding and may entail the redirection of existing resources or the development of new ones. 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.

• Goal I — Student Engagement and Academic Achievement
  We will challenge every Skidmore student to achieve academic excellence through full engagement with our rich and rigorous educational experience.
  
  Priority Initiatives
  • Increase student academic engagement in the first year.
  • Increase support for research and creative activity throughout faculty careers.
  • Enhance intellectual life for the faculty, students, and others who comprise the extended Skidmore community.
  • Strengthen information resources across the College.
  • Strengthen the natural sciences to increase the number of science majors and enhance the science literacy of all Skidmore students.
  • Increase our effectiveness in helping our graduates plan and prepare for their post-Skidmore lives.
  • Take better advantage of the resources and capacity for innovation in the Office of the Dean of Special Programs (ODSP) to support the relevant initiatives identified under this Goal (and others, as appropriate).
   
• Goal II — Intercultural and Global Understanding
  We will challenge every Skidmore student to develop the intercultural understanding and global awareness necessary to thrive in the complex and increasingly interconnected world of the 21^st Century.
  
  Priority Initiatives
  • Increase global awareness across the community in order to sensitize all Skidmore students to a complex, diverse, and interdependent world.
  • Renew the conversation about diversity both within the Skidmore faculty and broadly across the campus community; building upon the work of the Middle States review and other past efforts, establish clear educational objectives relating to this Goal and develop shared expertise in achieving them.
  • Enhance the diversity of our student population while providing the resources necessary to support all of our students in meeting our educational objectives.
  • Enhance the diversity of our faculty and other employee populations and enhance their skills that relate to achieving this Goal.
   
• Goal III — Informed, Responsible Citizenship
  We will prepare every Skidmore student to make the choices required of an informed, responsible citizen at home and in the world.
  
  Priority Initiatives
  • Foster pedagogical innovation relating to responsible citizenship; support campus initiatives that teach and exemplify this value.
  • Enhance residential learning.
  • Enhance the campus residential environment, with special attention to common spaces.
  • Increase support for athletics, fitness, and wellness.
  • Develop, broaden, and deepen the College's connections to the local community; enhance our ability to function as a socially and environmentally responsible corporate citizen.
   
• Goal IV — Independence and Resources
  We will preserve Skidmore's independence by developing the resources required to realize our aspirations.
  
  Priority Initiatives
  • Develop and enhance our key financial resources and our capacity to manage them.
  • Achieve and maintain competitive compensation for Skidmore faculty, staff, and administrators; enhance our ability to support their professional development.
  • Develop and enhance our capacity to manage our physical resources.
  • Develop and enhance those relationships essential to the Skidmore community.
  • Develop and enhance the “equity” in the Skidmore name.