August 22, 2023 – Key Initiatives & Strategic Planning for This Academic Year
Dear Colleagues,
Campus is getting active! I look forward very much to tomorrow, which is both the official move-in day for new students and the day for our opening staff and faculty meeting and welcome-back reception. I cannot wait to see the full community gathered again!
I’m writing to share a vision for key initiatives and strategic planning that we will undertake during this academic year. Over the past year, I had the opportunity to meet many of you—in classrooms, offices, and studios; at meetings and events; and over many meals. I heard your ideas about what makes Davidson special and how we can continue to shape it. We also convened hundreds of alumni, families, and friends of Davidson in a dozen cities across the country to hear their perspectives. In recent months, I’ve worked with the senior leadership team and the board of trustees to envision themes that are distinctly Davidson and that offer promise to advance our educational purpose. We also have sought to build a process for the upcoming year that will productively involve the college community in this work to shape our shared future.
Davidson is poised to advance on a number of high-priority fronts. We will build on prior campus-wide planning to bring a major renovation of the library closer to reality. We also will continue the design process for the “With These Hands” Commemoration site on the most historic part of campus. On a related note, we will prioritize the archival, archeological, and other educational work around the Beaver Dam plantation site. In addition, we will plan for new facilities for student health and well-being as well as prepare a new master plan to serve as a road map for future campus facilities. And as I announced last year, we are undertaking a national search for a chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer. I’m grateful to Professor Gayle Kaufman and Athletics Director Chris Clunie for agreeing to co-lead this search.
Those endeavors grow out of our shared values and mission. Many are under way, as they address urgent needs. We want, though, to look far beyond the moment and shape our future.
We will form strategic plan working groups around four themes:
Learning today and tomorrow: The core mission of Davidson is to educate students for lives of leadership and service. Toward that end, our educational work must always be dynamic, preparing students for today and tomorrow. This group will help our faculty explore and adopt effective and innovative teaching strategies and engage with new fields of knowledge. It will lay the foundation for Davidson to tackle the signal challenge facing educators today: harnessing generative AI for deep learning and ethical work.
Discovering passion, developing purpose: Davidson’s liberal-arts approach to education has never been more valuable, as graduates must build the capacities to think critically and creatively, to express themselves in written, verbal, analog and digital ways, to collaborate in diverse groups, and to continue learning throughout their lives and careers. This group will focus on how Davidson can more fully connect classroom learning, advising and mentoring, other educational and work experiences, and engagement with alumni/ae as students explore professional pathways.
Building public good: This working group will plan for how Davidson College can better equip students to practice their humane instincts, engage in mutual learning, and forge shared commitments from which to make the world more compassionate, sustainable, and just. A Davidson difference in the world will be the empathy and mutual respect that our graduates model in their lives, and Davidson College will become a “go-to place” where constructive conversations and innovative public solutions emerge to problems that are local, regional, national, and international.
Engaging Davidson and Greater Charlotte: Few top-ranked liberal arts colleges benefit from being located within a major metropolitan area; Davidson certainly does. This region, with its diverse population, finance and tech leadership, non-profit and civic strength, vibrant arts and culture, professional sports teams, and hub airport, offers multiple educational and partnership opportunities. This working group will focus on how the college can more fully leverage its location in, and contribute educational resources to, the Town of Davidson and the Greater Charlotte area.
A strategic plan steering committee, consisting of leaders from the four working groups and other colleagues, will guide and coordinate our overall planning. I’m delighted that VP of Academic Affairs & Dean of Faculty Shelley Rigger and VP of Student Life and Dean of Students Byron McCrae, will co-lead the strategic planning process. We will charge each working group to produce a report with possible initiatives in response to initial questions as well as ideas and opportunities that arise along the way.
Each of the four working groups will be seeking input from staff, faculty, students, and the wider college community in the coming weeks. We will be sharing with campus members the charge to each working group, with occasional updates as the work proceeds. Our aim is to have a clear and dynamic strategic plan finalized by commencement—a plan that can guide our priorities and galvanize Davidson as we create our shared future.
If you have an interest in serving on one of the working groups, or if you’d like to nominate someone else to do so, please email this information to strategicplanning@davidson.edu by next Friday, September 1st.
I’ll look forward to communicating in person more detail about strategic planning at the opening faculty and staff meeting tomorrow at 3 p.m. in Lilly Gallery—and we will have some new Davidson gear to give out as well. Please stay tuned for more updates to follow. I am grateful to all of you for joining in our key projects and strategic planning.
All best for the new school year.
Doug Hicks '90
President