For: Wesleyan Board of Trustees

From: Douglas J. Bennet, President

Date: October 30, 1998

Subject: Strategy for Wesleyan

For the past three years we have been engaged in an intensive review of all aspects of our institution. The planning streams include the academic plan ratified by the faculty last spring, a campus-wide facilities master plan, financial planning including the new investment policy and the long-range financial projections of our base budget, and an analysis of our market position. In our planning efforts we have been aided by the outside consultation provided by The Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company.

Strategy for Wesleyan is a working plan that brings these planning streams together. The plan restates Wesleyan’s commitments and provides broad guidance for the future. Imbedded in the plan are some major choices. We have chosen excellence in the academic core as an essential underpinning for Wesleyan’s unique strengths rather than a strategy of differentiation from other prestigious schools. We have committed ourselves to continue need-blind admissions. We propose to create a central focus for the campus to strengthen the sense of community. Finally, the plan establishes a set of objectives to be pursued with existing resources and with additional resources from the comprehensive campaign.

At the same time, Strategy for Wesleyan is not the last word. The strategy should be used as a tool, as a robust hypothesis against which future decisions can be weighed. This will be particularly important as Wesleyan continues to work with the large financial needs implied in the plan, balancing academic, student assistance and facilities needs in preparation for the comprehensive campaign. Because Wesleyan is less well endowed than its peers, we must continue to achieve excellence with exceptionally efficient use of our resources. All of these decisions must be made in consultation with the entire Wesleyan community, guided by, but not directed by Strategy for Wesleyan.

Our planning process has included close consultation with all Wesleyan constituencies, on campus and off. Drafts of Strategy for Wesleyan have been reviewed by

the trustees, made available on the Web, and considered in three campus-wide fora this autumn. The latest version of the strategy is attached. This draft has been modified to take account of comments received from faculty, students, alumni/ae and others. While there is not agreement on every detail, I believe there is acceptance of the broad direction of the strategy.

It is in this context that I seek the Board’s approval of Strategy for Wesleyan.

The remainder of this memo is a synopsis of the major areas of work and investment for the immediate future.

Our primary objective is to improve the academic core. We have begun implementation of the academic plan which focuses on curricular renewal and enhanced advising. One early result is that retention of first-year students is the highest since record keeping of this statistic began 18 years ago. We believe that a large part of this retention success is related to the new registration system which partially addresses the course access problem and improves the advising relationship between students and faculty. Improved retention of students will ultimately improve the graduation rate. More immediate improvement in the graduation rate is possible with the ratification of the legislation on graduation requirements proposed by the Dean of the College which is now before the Educational Policy Committee.

Additional faculty are necessary to implement the academic plan. Our long-range projections include 20 new faculty positions which can be funded by the base budget over the next four years. The first five of these positions have been allocated. These new positions will provide additional teaching resources dedicated to the curriculum for first- and second-year students. The additional faculty would lower our student/teacher ratio to 10:1.

Thirty percent of our current faculty will retire in the next ten years. We will need to recruit and retain the best faculty. A faculty committee is meeting with the administration to ensure that Wesleyan faculty are compensated at a level equal to faculty in our peer group of colleges and universities.

Strategy for Wesleyan states that an additional 10 faculty positions would provide needed teaching strength in new and exciting intellectual areas and would bring our student/teacher ratio to about 9:1. The comprehensive campaign may provide the financial resources for these new positions. Alternatively, we may decide that endowment in support of the first 20 positions is the more achievable goal.

Well designed classrooms with the appropriate level of technology infrastructure are necessary for excellent teaching in the 21^st century. Our facilities master plan addresses

these issues through a combination of funding including major maintenance funds, the capital budget and support from the comprehensive campaign.

The initiatives outlined within the academic core will directly affect the important metrics related to faculty resources and retention rate. Our success in the implementation of the academic plan, communicated to the higher education community, will bolster our academic reputation.

We believe that Wesleyan’s financial aid policy should have the following three key objectives:

• Help us compete for and admit the best students.
• Maintain financial access to a Wesleyan education for all admitted students.
• Maintain the financial viability of the aid program.

The long-term stability of our aid program will require a balance between loan levels and the number of students on aid. The long-range base budget forecast includes the provision to freeze student loans at the level of the class of ‘01. This is the first year of the loan freeze, and the yield among admitted financial-aid students is back to its normal level, about equal to our yield on nonfinancial aid students, after a one-year dip. The freeze on loans will allow our loan levels to drop to about 130 percent of the COFHE college mean, provided the number of students on aid remains at its current level.

Additional improvement in our aid program is dependent on new endowment for financial aid from the comprehensive campaign. A projected additional 63 million dollars for financial aid would insulate our aid program from the year-to-year variability of the annual budget and would provide the institution with more latitude in both the loan level and the number of students on aid. Even with this additional support, Wesleyan likely will remain somewhat more costly than its peer group in order to sustain its need-blind-admission policy.

The improvements to our financial aid program will improve our student selection and have an impact on our retention rate. New resources for financial aid will improve our measure of per capita financial resources.

Wesleyan’s facilities must be well maintained, efficiently used and adapted for the future. Superb facilities and the programs they support are important for attracting top students and faculty and for creating a cohesive university community. Facilities planning committees continue to work to address the programmatic needs of different constituencies. Ultimately, Senior Staff will recommend to the Board the priority and scope for those projects which require new capital funds.

Student satisfaction surveys indicate that Wesleyan students rate their campus experience somewhat less favorably than students at peer institutions. The facilities planning process has directly attacked this issue through its residential life planning effort and the planning for the center of campus.

Residential life planning has focused on Wesleyan’s existing housing stock. The plan proposes better administration of existing housing and particular attention to the wood-frame houses and the neighborhoods surrounding campus. Administrative changes include improvements to the housing lottery and the new program housing initiative. Improvements to the wood-frame houses and adjacent streetscapes will be accomplished through major maintenance funding already included in the long-range base budget. No new construction is proposed and no new capital is required for this initiative.

The center of campus project envisions a university center which will incorporate dining, student activity space, a forum for University-wide assembly and curricular space dedicated to the arts and new electronic media. The goal of the project is to create an intellectual center and crossroads for our community through the reuse of old athletic buildings located in the geographic center of campus. The center would be the counterbalance to our geographically spread student housing and our decentralized academic departments and instructional space. Of more pragmatic concern, the new dining facility would be more economical to operate and would allow juniors and seniors more freedom in their choice of dining. The creation of the center and the requisite consolidation of athletic facilities at the Freeman Center requires new capital support from the comprehensive campaign. A formal recommendation will be presented to the Board at the end of the current phase of facilities planning.

Curricular needs for new and refurbished facilities have been identified by the faculty planning committees. Where appropriate, major maintenance funding can address some of these needs, but significant new capital will be necessary for any new construction or substantial conversion of existing buildings. The current phase of facilities planning is focused on determining efficiencies for each project. At the end of this phase of planning we will be able to determine more adequately determine the cost of these projects. Informed by this latest round of planning, we will create a list of priorities for the comprehensive campaign.

The estimates in the strategy cost summary show the new endowment and capital funds required to complete the plan, as well as the commitment from the current operating budget. Where additional operating funds are needed, they are also expressed in terms of required new endowment. It is important to recognize that these are rough estimates that will be reduced and refined as specific projects become better defined and as priorities become established for the comprehensive campaign. Conversely, inflation

will create an upward pressure on these cost estimates. For each initiative we will present the Board with a detailed financial analysis as part of the decision making process.

Whereas Wesleyan University has been engaged in a series of broad planning initiatives; whereas we have clearly stated the goals of a Wesleyan education for the 21^st century; whereas our comprehensive planning has culminated in the plan known as Strategy for Wesleyan; and whereas the implementation of this plan will strengthen and add coherence to the educational mission of the institution; The Board of Trustees adopts the strategy as a working plan for the future and supports its implementation.

DJB/jwm

Attachment: Strategy for Wesleyan (10/30/98)