Retreat Report 5:49

Written by Dan Ryan

Introduction: Who and What

We are working group one, “undergraduate programs.”  Our members are Sonya Delwaide, Beth Kochly, Brian O'Rourke, Kiem Sie, Michael Beller and myself.  We relied on all of you for ideas on how the evolution of liberal arts for the 21^st century can lead to an exciting and sustainable Mills 2027.

Strategic Planning

The most frequent question I was asked along the way is whether I think anything will come of this, each colleague basically wanting to know whether I’d counsel cynicism or sincerity toward strategic planning.  It’s the right question.

Conventional strategic plan exercises fall into one of three categories, each of which can be represented by a snarky metaphor:

Type 1 is represented by the Sears Christmas Wishbook catalog.  Strategic plan as letter to Santa Claus.  Get on the list if you want your pet project funded.

Type 2 is symbolized by a flag waving demagog.  Let’s produce a ponderous document with some Roman numeraled themes and fill it with hyperbole that no one could disagree with and everyone will salute.

Type 3 just bears a yellow diamond hazard warning sign: Caution – massive waste of time ahead. The real decisions have already been made or will happen way above your pay grade.

http://bit.ly/Wh9DGZ

K Henderson

http://bit.ly/Wh96EZ

I would guess 80% of planning exercises are in one or another of these.

To quote Robert Redford’s character in a 1972 film: “there’s got to be a better way.”

I honestly think there is.  I worked up a PowerPoint to prepare for this quick report, and the slide I composed to represent “actual” strategic planning has three elements.  On the left is a picture of JFK telling congress we are going to put a person on the moon by the end of the decade.  On the right is a picture of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon.  And connecting them is a complex chart showing all the things NASA had to do to get from the rhetoric to the landing at Tranquility Base.

So, What Did We Do?

We spent the fall coaxing out of all of you ideas for getting Mills to the moon.  People mentioned things in conversation and we wrote them up.  People sent us a proto-ideas and we expanded on them.  Folks sent us full-blown proposals and we added them to the inventory.  You can see the whole collection on our blog. 

http://stratplan.danryan.us

millsfac, 2027

Most importantly you can COMMENT – tell us why it would work, how it would connect with something you’ve thought of, how it could enhance the undergraduate experience, or increase applications and enrollment. You can comment as a department head, an old-hand who’s been there and done that, a new face with new ideas, or you can even contribute anonymously.  The only thing we discourage is that old Millsism, “we tried that back in ’96….”

How is this shaping up?

Our premise was that the goal is to make Mills a bigger, better, and more sustainable undergraduate liberal arts college for women (not excluding graduate programs and other goals, but that was our group’s focus).

Thus, enrollment growth is what makes these ideas “strategic.”  But not growth for its own sake.  We are driven, too, by the question of what will make Mills a better liberal arts college for women who will live in the rest of the 21^st century.

Our ideas about growing enrollment, then, will be tested against the question “how does this make Mills a better college?” just as ideas about becoming a better college are tested against the question “how does this increase enrollment?”

We have begun to organize proposals into five categories[1]:

1. Improvements in what we are already doing and how we tell the world about it.
• Examples: (1) make cross-registration work better; (2) expand study abroad; (3) coordinate/expand undergraduate research
2. Re-workings, re-imaginings, and re-combinations that, with modest support, could expand the menu of options students see.
• Examples: (1) faculty designed college majors; (2) “slash” majors
3. Expansions and re-toolings that have potential for near-term net benefit.
• Examples: (1) hot minors; (2) streamlining transfer admission; (3) expand public radio program
4. Technologies, tools, and practices that will help us to be more effective and more productive across the spectrum of activities that make up higher education.
• Examples: (1) blended courses; (2) credit for MOOC work; (3) faculty-centric technology adoption.
5. New Mission-Resonant Programs that are potential net enrollment attractors.
• Examples:(1) expanded nursing program; (2) re-created communications major;(3) honors psychology program.

Where do we go from here?

We are currently reconciling our compilation of proposals with the material produced by the other working groups.  We continue to solicit feedback and new proposals – the sooner the better.  We are identifying the intersections and how they fit together as a strategy.

In this work we are mindful that innovation is not simply a matter of new or good ideas.  Innovation is taking new ideas and making them into a going concern. 

That means drilling down into the logic models [2] behind faith-based “if you build it they will come” proposals and rigorous explorations of the question “if they come, where will you put them?”[3]

Even the premise warrants scrutiny.  What can we do if we are bigger?  Too easily dismissed as obvious, the case must be made about why a bigger Mills is a better Mills.[4]

Conclusion

In a recent conversation, a colleague observed that all these plans need to revolve around a central observation: there is a thing we do very well and a whole bunch of young people out there who could benefit from it.  Sonia Sotamayor’s description, in a recent NPR interview, of her struggle at an ivy league institution as an exceptionally gifted but untutored young student hints at what we are talking about.  Her account of the techniques she had to invent for herself to succeed against odds generated by gaps in her preparedness come close to capturing the genre of value-added that a few years at Mills represents.

Our task is to build around this core competence a liberal arts curriculum for the 21^st century that threads the needle of what students want and what students will need.

The challenges we face are not Mills specific, but the constellation of solutions we generate can be.

At the end of the day, it is up to us.  There is no Santa Claus and in some ways it is rocket science.  You cannot, alas, talk your way to the moon.  The parts need to fit together, the navigation has to be sound, and you have to reckon with natural forces that work against you.  But let us remember that while you need to escape gravity to go to the moon, gravity is also the force that makes the whole getting to the moon and back possible.

---

[1] These correspond, roughly, to three components of potential enrollment growth:

·       Growth up to the capacity of status quo resources

·       Growth associated with low cost expansion of majors repertoire

·       Growth associated with modest sized, high leverage investments

·       Growth that is enabled by emerging efficiencies

·       Growth associated with more significant investments in new academic programs.

[2] That is, how do these inputs and activities produce those outputs and outcomes?

[3] It means, for example, putting Mills 2012 repertoire of majors next to the repertoires of the colleges we lose admitted students to and next to list of the things that attract the attention of students for whom Mills would be perfect but who never even consider us because we don’t show up in their initial search.

[4]  And there is more to it than the obvious point that a bigger Mills still exists In other words, we will need explicate for our various constituencies what we will be able to do with enrollments of 900+X and 600+Y.