Mount Holyoke’s preparation for its comprehensive evaluation began in earnest at the outset of our most recent strategic planning process, launched in the summer of 2015 and culminating in the Plan for Mount Holyoke 2021 approved by the Board of Trustees in October 2016. The College’s integrated planning process, initially conceptualized for the Plan for Mount Holyoke 2010 and thereafter revised, links strategic planning, academic planning, financial planning, and facilities master planning in such a way that it was impossible not to consider how those discrete planning efforts would inform our self-study.
The self-study provides a look back at our progress in meeting the goals of our previous strategic plan, particularly as they related to NEASC standards, how those successes and challenges have informed our current plan, and where we anticipate our energy and resources will take us between now and 2021 and beyond. While our mission statement was revised and expanded in 2014, much of what we aim to do well and what we aspire to do even better remains constant. As always, the voices informing our sense of progress, priorities, and direction are many. Changes in leadership, reestablishing (reimagining) our direction forward as a women’s college with an inclusive admissions policy, a liberal arts curriculum that is unafraid (mostly) of reimagining itself as it must, and facing the unavoidable conversations about financial sustainability in an environment that is questioning more rigorously than ever the value of a liberal arts education demands time, creativity, and a deep commitment to an institutional mission and values that guide us through even the most tumultuous of times.
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