Wesleyan has reviewed its curriculum, facilities, finances, and competitive position. Our purpose is to assure that Wesleyan offers an extraordinary education, that Wesleyan’s preeminence is firmly established, and that we meet the challenges of the next century in a flexible and self-defined way. This Strategy for Wesleyan brings together principles, plans, and major pending decisions. It is at once a snapshot of actions already taken and proposed commitments for the future. It is based on input from faculty, students, staff, trustees and outside experts. That strategy in turn will help detail priorities for the comprehensive campaign.

Planning resulting in this Strategy for Wesleyan has moved in five streams:

• Academic planning
• Facilities planning
• Financial planning
• Research and marketing
• Planning for a comprehensive fundraising campaign.

In each area, broad and intense involvement of key constituencies has been central. In all areas, action has accompanied planning. The ingredients are in place for a period of institutional affirmation and commitment to change. The purpose of this report is to draw these five streams together into a comprehensive plan for Wesleyan’s future.

The academic planning process began in the autumn of 1995. The statement that emerged from this process, "Wesleyan Education for the 21^st Century," is a reaffirmation of our commitment to liberal education: "The task of liberal education, as we see it today, is to instill a capacity for critical and creative thinking that can address unfamiliar and changing circumstances, to engender a moral sensibility that can weigh consequence beyond self, and to establish an enduring love of learning for its own sake that will enable graduates to refresh their education throughout their lives."

The document identifies critical capabilities that will focus the Wesleyan curriculum:

• Critical thinking and analysis, including quantitative skills
• Creative thinking and expression
• Ethical reasoning
• Communication—writing, speaking, reading, visual and aural literacy, and the ability to understand the communication of others
• Familiarity with the process through which knowledge is created
• Ability to engage technology
• Capacity for effective citizenship
• Cross-cultural competence, including foreign language.

The document reasserts Wesleyan’s commitment to distinguished teaching and scholarship, and looks for practical ways to recenter a traditional liberal arts educational program in the context of rapid societal changes. Two pervasive concerns are the clarity with which courses offered outside the major address the key capabilities mentioned above and the effectiveness of academic advising.

In the spring of 1998 Wesleyan’s faculty completed legislation supporting "Wesleyan Education for the 21^st Century." This legislation is innovative and promises Wesleyan students a critical awareness of their own learning and development. It reshapes the concept of an interconnected curriculum and offers a plan for enhanced advising that is practical, substantive, and achievable.

Consistent with the academic plan, the facilities planning process has fostered coherence while sustaining variety. Attention has been paid to the current physical fragmentation of the campus and its failure to reinforce sufficiently the notion of a residential academic community. The planning principles, presented to the Trustees in May 1997 are as follows:

• Wesleyan’s campus should have a focal point and the campus as a whole should have a clear identity
• Existing buildings should be used as well as possible, and activity should be concentrated
• All changes should reinforce the visual logic and appeal of the campus as a whole
• Where possible, changes should simplify administrative and operational burdens.

Six committees made up of faculty, students, and staff worked through the 1997-98 academic year to refine initial recommendations. Committees debated the social and residential shortcomings of the campus and the needs of academic programs, and proposed solutions. Primary recommendations call for:

• Completion of athletic facility consolidation
• Creation of a University Center
• Improvements in student residential facilities
• Improvements in facilities in the arts, social sciences, humanities, and sciences.

Wesleyan’s solutions promise to support the goals of the academic planning process. They are respectful, bringing vigor to our historic legacy, rather than violating it. The consistent focus is to build a strong residential academic community, attractive to both students and faculty.

Since the early 1990s, financial planning at Wesleyan has focused on achieving and maintaining financial equilibrium to preserve the value of the University’s physical and financial assets. The operating budget has been in balance for six years, annual funding for major maintenance and repair is sufficient to maintain the value of the physical plant, and the endowment has increased in value.

In order to inform long-range planning discussions, we have produced a base financial forecast. The base forecast incorporates the following key commitments:

• Create 20 new faculty positions
• Freeze student debt levels.
• Reduce annual increases in student charges from 4.2 percent to 3.2 percent over a 10-year period
• Improve classrooms and residential maintenance programs
• Provide support for curricular and advising enhancements
• Increase funds to support curricular and pedagogical innovation

The current financial model allows the University to evaluate the potential impact of changes in key planning assumptions and to analyze options in the context of financial equilibrium. This modeling process permits the University to identify those program areas where significant improvement must be achieved through a major infusion of capital gifts and increases in annual giving. Other than the 8 percent growth rate in annual giving, the base forecast does not include gifts that will be realized from the comprehensive campaign.

Pro bono studies completed for the University by The Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company have researched and documented Wesleyan’s standing, both perceived and quantifiable, among our peers, and have categorized the various strategies available to the University to refocus institutional reputation and achieve our strategic goals. These studies validate the internal planning processes.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study relied heavily on data gathered by Wesleyan’s 30 peer private institutions in the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE). The McKinsey & Company study isolated the components of an "academic core" that were common to all "top five" liberal arts colleges, as rated by U.S. News and World Report.

These external studies have encouraged several initiatives which are included in this revision of the plan:

• Increase faculty by up to 30 (rather than 20) and reduce class size
• Focus on academic excellence, broadly defined, not on attracting "niche markets", i.e., groups of potential applicants with a specialized focus or set of expectations
• Emphasize quality of learning experience and excellence of faculty resources
• Improve financial aid and reduce student debt burden.

Mark Edwards and Company, using the BCG and McKinsey data as well as their own research, focused on strategies for Wesleyan to tell its story to the larger community. Constrained resources and our difficulty in conveying a clear message have perhaps obscured the University’s high quality and distinctive institutional identity. Scholarly production by Wesleyan faculty is unparalleled among institutions of our kind. Performance by Wesleyan alumni/ae at graduate and professional schools rivals that of the major research universities. By any objective standard, a Wesleyan education is among the best preparations available for a full and successful life in a fast-changing and interdependent world. A clearly-targeted marketing strategy must assert Wesleyan’s core academic commitments.

Financial resources, directly and indirectly, have the greatest impact on institutional prospects and reputation, as is clear from the McKinsey & Company study. Strategy for Wesleyan, requires an investment of $66.8 million in capital improvements, in addition to investments included in current budget projections, and a substantial increase of $6.6 million annually above current projections for the operating budget. New endowment funds of $132 million would support this increase in operating expenditures, so that the total of new capital (present value) and endowment required to support these proposals is $197.8 million over and above current revenues and annual gifts. The proposals fall into two broad categories: Faculty and Academic Programs ($110.7 million), and Students and the Residential Community ($87.1 million) are provided in the attached cost summary. Well over half of the initiatives proposed here for fundraising will add to the endowment. Of the remainder, the bulk of facilities projects involve investing in existing buildings. Overall, the initiatives proposed in this plan represent a concentration of resources, not a proliferation. The vision is expansive, but the execution is deliberate and focused.

Our goals will require broad alumni/ae engagement and financial support. All independent educational institutions thrive because of the loyalty and generosity of their friends and supporters, and college prestige is measured in part by the extent of alumni/ae giving. Wesleyan fund raising is on the upswing, but only broad-based alumni/ae support will make possible the changes that will keep Wesleyan among the top undergraduate institutions.

The University’s comprehensive campaign is now in its "quiet" phase. A campaign chairman, national leadership committees, and a plan for campaign operations are in place. Fundraising targets and priorities for the campaign will be set during the next year in consultation with these volunteer leaders. While we believe Wesleyan is building a compelling case for additional support, a great deal of institutional credibility and volunteer enthusiasm rides on setting achievable goals. Campaign goals typically include the Annual Fund for all the years of the campaign, some precampaign gifts, and some foundation and institutional grants. For Wesleyan, these ongoing revenues would total over $100 million in a seven-year campaign. This amount, combined with the $197.8 million cost of this plan, would drive Wesleyan’s campaign about 50 percent above the level at which our competitors have succeeded. This means that the honing process must continue as we test the elements of this strategy against each other and against ongoing investments.

The remainder of this document presents specific strategies falling readily into

two broad areas:

• Faculty and academic programs (engaged learning and distinguished faculty)
• Students and the residential community (accomplished students and resources for excellence)

For more than 30 years, elite undergraduate programs, including Wesleyan’s, have had few requirements outside the major. The best Wesleyan experience is usually a class freely chosen by both students and faculty. At the same time, there is consensus that our first- and second-year programs outside the major need greater coherence. The challenge is to maintain the freedom and vitality of a Wesleyan education, while giving meaning, coherence and rigor to students’ overall experience. Within this freedom we must ensure that the key capabilities of a contemporary liberal arts education—including writing, speaking, interpreting nonverbal material, quantitative reasoning, ethical reasoning and cross-cultural competence—are nurtured.

Wesleyan’s curriculum for first- and second-year students will continue to comprise the following course groups:

• First-Year Initiative (FYI) courses: small seminars (under 20 students) especially for first-year students. Enough are offered (more than 50 annually) to permit every first-year student to take one, or sometimes more.
• Gateway introductory courses for prospective majors. These courses provide foundations for the study of disciplines such as biology or economics and serve general education as well. Students typically take several of these courses as they explore prospective majors.
• Courses that teach particular key capabilities, such as writing, foreign language or introductory mathematics courses. Our new curriculum in key capabilities will add many such courses, particularly those stressing ethical reasoning and public presentation.
• General survey courses that offer a comprehensive view of historical periods, world civilizations, and intellectual, religious, musical, artistic and philosophical traditions.

Wesleyan’s faculty legislation adds an exciting new set of "focused inquiry" courses for first- and second- year students. These small courses(typically for fewer than 20 students), sometimes linked to larger lecture-discussion classes(up to 40 students), will seek to involve students early on as "scholar/students" and might address:

• Enduring or classic texts, thinkers, composers, artists
• Major paradigms and methodologies, discussing a problem, era, event, or phenomenon and the methods by which scholars investigate and analyze it
• Cutting edge research that promises to challenge existing paradigms.

Some of these courses will involve students working directly with the object of study, for example, with hands-on laboratory experience, fieldwork or the study of original texts. Our new science curriculum for nonscience majors is based largely on focused-inquiry courses.

The ability to make connections among seemingly disparate areas of knowledge and experience is one hallmark of a successful liberal arts education. Under the new faculty legislation, we will give students and faculty the tools to map the relationships among courses outside the major. The course catalog will be Web-based and will take full advantage of Web technology to show students and faculty the connections, overlaps and contrasts among courses, disciplines and research interests.

The World Wide Web has the capacity for making complex links between pieces of information from multiple sources, by means of "hypertext." Making multiple connections gives meaning and power to the educational experience, but the traditional course catalog, being essentially linear, can do little to provide this kind of assistance. A student’s course list put together from a course catalog can resemble a supermarket cart filled with impulse purchases.

Faced with the consequences of unfettered student choice, and the intellectual independence of faculty members, some colleges have struggled to impose coherence by establishing a hierarchical list of required classes, or a core curriculum. Wesleyan has rejected this model. A core curriculum tends to be static, while knowledge is dynamic. A contemporary liberal arts education can no longer be inclusive in its curriculum, or even rely on selections within an agreed-upon canon. It must be exploratory and, above all, connective. Coherence is achieved by clarifying the potential relationships among diverse elements, not by prescribing a sequence of discrete, required courses.

While gateway introductory courses are often necessary as prerequisites within areas of specialization (i.e., majors), single general education courses typically constitute a stand-alone experience for the student. They are likely to sink quickly into oblivion once completed, unless they are linked strongly in the student’s mind with other intellectual experiences. The Wesleyan faculty has identified various ways in which the place of a particular course in the intellectual landscape can be identified by faculty and students. This mapping will help faculty as well as students in putting together an academic program and will stimulate the development of new courses that interconnect with others.

Emphasize key capabilities. First, courses will be identified as emphasizing one or more key capabilities. Students will be encouraged to plan their course distribution to include the full range of capabilities. While many of these capabilities have always been understood to be at the heart of a liberal arts education, some, such as public presentation and ethical reasoning, have been neglected in recent decades. Others have emerged more recently, such as interpreting nonverbal material and cross-cultural competence. The interpretation of nonverbal material is becoming increasingly crucial as visual and aural material proliferates and nonlinear communication plays a more dominant role. Wesleyan, with its outstanding programs in the arts and its long-standing commitment to explore issues of diversity, is well placed to develop courses that help to foster these essential capabilities.

Cross-cultural competence is a necessity in a plural society and a global economy and has emerged in faculty deliberations as a critical component of contemporary liberal arts education. Students will be encouraged to develop an integrated course of study in the way of life, arts, history, intellectual tradition and language (where appropriate) of a culture, society or civilization other than their own. Since more than one third of Wesleyan undergraduates study abroad in their junior year, students will be encouraged to follow a sequence of courses that prepares them for this experience.

Students will be able, through hypertext links, to identify quickly all courses that emphasize a particular capability and to select one that coincides with other interests and connections. Ideally, faculty will readily identify colleagues emphasizing the same capability, and will more quickly be able to share insights and expertise.

Identify emerging fields of knowledge with course "clusters." Courses will also be identified, where appropriate, as belonging to "clusters." Clusters describe groups of courses on a common subject that are not sufficiently developed to justify becoming a major. New ways of organizing knowledge are constantly emerging, and clusters will provide students and faculty with a mechanism for identifying these emerging fields and shaping a coherent course of study around them. Clusters will also be identified by hypertext links.

Highlight intellectual relationships among disciplines with "pathways." A third organizing structure will designate "pathways." Pathways will indicate an optimum sequence of courses mapped out by faculty members who wish to highlight interdepartmental links less obvious than the common subject matter of the cluster. Pathway links will serve to legitimize the more tentative connections made by undergraduates and to encourage the exploration of relationships between different areas of knowledge.

The role of the academic advisor is to encourage responsible decisions by the student. The new advising and on-line registration system has already improved advising by assigning students to advisors whose class they are taking or who share their academic interests.

The new system will also benefit from the Web-based curriculum map described above. The map will provide a powerful resource to the advisor as well as the student, allowing the advisor to probe, question and suggest with authority. The electronic portfolio software will help students and advisors clarify options and track choices as students move from first- and second-year advisors to advisors within their majors.

A second resource, also based on the Web, will chronicle the full range of a student’s experience at Wesleyan and will be available to the advisor at any time. The Student Electronic Portfolio is an individualized Web page designed to convey academic and personal information about a student to advisors and other audiences. Each portfolio will consist of an academic section and an optional personal section. Information in the academic section will contain the student’s academic history and be maintained on and entered from the University’s computer system. Information in the personal section will be maintained by the student: it could contain, for example, the student’s choice of academic papers, works of prose and poetry, mathematical proofs, lab reports, scanned images of artwork, career goals and interests.

Wesleyan has increased funds available to support pedagogical, cross-departmental or intradepartmental innovation over the next ten years. The value of such a fund is illustrated by the remarkable success of the cross-disciplinary Center for the Americas, and by the peer-tutoring program in introductory biology.

The support of students engaged in basic research is one of the distinguishing features of a Wesleyan education. Faculty in the sciences have raised extramural funding to support student research for many years, to the great benefit of the students' development as independent contributors to scholarship. We envisage an enhanced program that will extend opportunities to pursue summer research to students in the arts, humanities, and social sciences and provide matching funds for current student research grants in the sciences. The research projects would either be directed by faculty or conducted in collaboration with faculty.

We have long held that excellent scholarship and excellent teaching are complementary.

Scholarly pursuit of knowledge for its own sake invests teaching with passion and a compelling sense of discovery. By engaging in the most advanced scholarship, Wesleyan faculty can help students participate in shaping knowledge rather than being mere consumers of established views.

At Wesleyan, innovation depends on an open curriculum that gives individual faculty considerable latitude, with departmental and administrative approval, to determine course offerings. Scholarship is also supported through Wesleyan’s sabbatical policy, through interdisciplinary initiatives, and through various scholarly centers that foster.

Therefore, the University must continue to foster an intellectual environment that attracts and retains active and productive scholars. We will seek out faculty whose scholarship is invigorated by direct and open interaction with undergraduates in and out of the classroom.

Wesleyan faculty are successful in generating research support from foundations and corporations, but opportunities are frequently limited by the priorities of these funding sources. To encourage innovation in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom, the University needs a fund to sustain scholarly initiatives across the campus. The faculty and the undergraduate community can be enriched by a program designed to underwrite collaborative research projects with visiting scholars and students, to sustain an active program of Wesleyan-sponsored research projects, to assist the faculty in meeting the matching requirements of external funders, to leverage the often meager compensation provided by many prestigious foundation fellowships, and to enhance start-up packages for new faculty appointments. Each component of the endowment will help attract and retain distinguished faculty.

Since 1985-86 Wesleyan’s goal has been to reach a level of faculty compensation close to the top of the selective colleges in our comparison group of 20 colleges and universities. We want to hire the very best and to retain our most valued faculty.

The long-range forecast projects a 4 percent increase in total faculty compensation. In 1998-99, 59 percent of the tenure-track faculty are full professors. Only Amherst and Washington and Lee among the top 14 U.S. News colleges (1997 rankings) have a more senior faculty. For this reason, Wesleyan’s mean compensation ranks fifth among the 162 nationally-rated colleges, and for the moment, the U.S. News measure of faculty compensation gives us a lift in its rankings. With the replacement of retiring professors and the planned expansion of the faculty by 20, the proportion of junior faculty at Wesleyan will increase, and our overall mean compensation, relative to our peers, will likely fall.

The faculty has created an elected Compensation and Benefits Committee, which will discuss Wesleyan’s compensation policy with the administration during the 1998/99 academic year. We do not want to get ahead of, or anticipate, the outcome of this process. We are collecting comparative, benchmarked data to inform this discussion.

The student/faculty ratio at Wesleyan is 11:1, in part as a result of the cutbacks imposed by the University Plan to achieve financial equilibrium. Many of Wesleyan’s chief competitors among liberal arts colleges have significantly more favorable ratios. Giving students better access to courses, more direct contact with faculty and more experience of smaller classes requires strategic additions to the faculty.

Faculty legislation implementing "Wesleyan Education for the 21^st Century" calls for twenty additional positions. The University’s ten-year financial projections incorporate the addition of those new faculty positions as a large cohort of retiring senior faculty is replaced by new appointments. The projections also indicate that the replacement of retiring faculty will occur over a sufficiently long time period to limit the economic pressure of an aging and more expensive faculty in the next 40 years. These positions will increase the faculty to five more than its strength before cutbacks imposed by the University Plan and will be used to implement the goals of the new academic plan.

Wesleyan’s academic and competitive position would be strengthened if up to 10 additional positions were available to support emerging fields in interdisciplinary programs and within disciplines. This total of 30 additional positions would bring the student-faculty ratio to about 9.6:1 by 2004-05.

The faculty cohort appointed during the rapid expansion in the 1960’s is now nearing retirement, and up to 30 percent of the faculty will be replaced over the next decade. We must continue to develop new strength, energy and diversity in the faculty, comparable to the vitality that propelled Wesleyan to the forefront of liberal arts institutions in that era and sustain it today.

Our challenge is to provide competitive salaries and benefits, and a sufficiently attractive and collegial work environment to ensure that the best candidates will be drawn to Wesleyan. Adequate funds must be set aside to support the recruitment process, including funds for lab renovations and start-up research support. We will also ensure that all faculty searches support our commitment to diversity and to increasing rapidly the representation of women and minorities on the faculty.

Doctoral programs in life sciences, physics, chemistry, math and world music buttress scholarship and teaching. The financial cost of graduate programs, in a recently completed study, has been determined to be small, and the benefit to undergraduates is considerable. Few liberal arts colleges can offer comparable opportunities to undergraduates to become actively involved in basic research. Undergraduates at Wesleyan frequently co-author published research.

The Graduate Liberal Studies Program, established in 1953, is the oldest graduate program in the country specifically designed for adult students in the liberal arts. The program offers interdisciplinary study at the graduate level leading to a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, an experience not readily available through traditional graduate education. The program attracts educators and administrators from public and private institutions, as well as students from a variety of backgrounds and professions throughout Connecticut. The curriculum, taught largely by Wesleyan faculty, represents an important contribution to the educational resources of the state.

All departments

• Improve instructional spaces to accommodate changes in teaching methods

The development of the academic plan has focused attention on the general quality of the teaching environment. Increased need for seminar-type classrooms and widespread reliance on new technology to support instruction have led to a review of classroom condition and sufficiency and the adequacy of technological support. The principal space need is for more seminar-sized classrooms. These small classes can be the defining learning experience of the college years. With additional emphasis on classes of 20-40 students, more rooms which facilitate faculty-student interaction, will also be required. The proposed adaptations of Davenport and the Public Affairs Center, the construction of the Science "link" addition, and facilities proposed for the Arts should address these needs.

Studies have highlighted deficiencies in our teaching spaces. Furniture, lighting and ventilation often need improvement. Plans are in place to address these issues on an ongoing basis. The committee has emphasized that the overall environment in teaching spaces is certainly as significant as easy access to technology. Liberal arts education in a residential college requires active engagement in the classroom. Classrooms must be designed to make everyone in the room a potential participant.

Although the use of technology in classrooms is growing exponentially, not all instruction requires similarly sophisticated levels of technological support. At one end of the scale, faculty require that each student has constant class-time access to a computer; at the other end, an instructor may require the occasional use of audio-visual equipment to project an image, diagram or video clip. In recognition of this range of need, the committee has proposed three levels of investment in classroom technology.

The most technologically sophisticated rooms will be known as studio classrooms, and will allow each student to work at a computer in class. Up to five studio classrooms will be developed, dependent on emerging demand. A second tier of classrooms will be equipped with networkable computer projection capability, allowing for the use of still and video images, projection of lecture notes and other material from the instructor’s computer, and instant projection of printed images. The third tier will be geared to the use of portable equipment brought in for a one-time use. At all three levels, funds will be set aside for equipment replacement. The lifecycle for digital equipment will probably remain short for the foreseeable future.

Natural Sciences and Mathematics

The building systems in Hall-Atwater, Wesleyan’s major wet-bench science building, housing Chemistry and Biology, are near the end of their useful lives. Their use will be extended at relatively modest cost for 15 or 20 years, but at the end of that time the entire building will require replacement, given its intensive use for faculty and student research. Replacement, as is often the case with buildings of this type and vintage, will be more cost-effective than a total rehabilitation.

This relatively modest mid-term mechanical renovation requires the permanent relocation of synthetic chemistry to a new wing to be constructed linking Hall-Atwater (or its future replacement) to the Science Tower.

The planned building linking Hall-Atwater and the Science Tower will contain, in addition to synthetic chemistry, teaching and meeting spaces. Ideally, planetarium equipment will be installed. These will be useful and attractive to faculty from both buildings, encouraging more interactions among faculty and between faculty and students, while providing better teaching conditions. Investing in this new addition will also be more cost-effective than making any significant investment in Hall-Atwater, which is slated for eventual demolition.

Humanities

The Humanities departments are currently distributed in eight buildings, five of them close together on Court and High Streets, and are short of space. In the short term, Downey House could be modified to accommodate Classical Studies, with space equivalent to its current allocation in the Science Tower, and to provide additional office space for Romance Languages. Downey House has significant public spaces and will lend itself well to a central space for Humanities activities, bringing together faculty from different disciplines for seminars, visiting speakers, social events, and small conferences. With some landscaping improvements, this project will create something of a Humanities "village", including the English Department buildings on Court Street, 300 High Street, and Fisk Hall.

In the long term, bringing the Humanities departments together in a properly equipped facility could have a major impact on the quality of the academic experience at Wesleyan for both faculty and students, in addition to improving Wesleyan’s reputation among other liberal arts institutions. A new and appropriately-scaled building constructed on the power plant site on High Street might improve the appearance of the street and could have a sufficiently large footprint to bring together the great majority of the various scattered Humanities departments in a single location. Other sites will also be explored.

Arts

The old Squash Courts have been proposed for conversion to studio and teaching spaces. This proposal has been studied in conjunction with plans for the University Center in the Cage and Fayerweather, with the intention of integrating arts activity into the overall plans for the Center.

This facility is planned to include sound and image computing facilities, a faculty media development center, digitization services, and offices for support services. It will attract broad interest among faculty and students, and may well be a central magnet in the University Center.

The University’s preeminent print collection requires better stewardship, in terms of safety and climate control, and teaching facilities for art historians are far from ideal. It is desirable that the teaching museum be planned in such a way as to improve administration in the arts and to create a more welcoming and focused presence in the Center for the Arts.

The growth of Film Studies and the success of the Cinema Archives, which continues to attract important collections, have generated pressing space needs. The current proposal to address the overcrowded conditions of the Film Studies Program and to meet the needs of the Archive provides new space on Washington Terrace, adjacent to the current location of the Cinema Archives. It may be desirable that long-term planning for Film Study and the Archives look for ways to integrate their space requirements with other needs in the Arts.

Social Sciences

The Social Sciences departments housed in the Andrus Public Affairs Center (PAC) in Harriman Hall carry a disproportionate teaching load within the University and hope to see this situation remedied by the appointment of additional faculty. This will exacerbate existing space constraints. In addition, the building lends itself poorly to informal interaction, and the classroom spaces it offers are, in several cases, ill suited to today’s teaching methods. These concerns might be partly remedied by further exploring expansion into the attic and basement, and ultimately looking at the possibility of a new wing. In the long term a new wing on the east side of the building might enhance its appearance significantly, in addition to solving space and configuration problems. Meanwhile, conversion of Davenport to an academic building would relieve pressure on the Public Affairs Center.

Many of the concerns of the Social Sciences may be remedied by adapting the Davenport Center, once a new University Center has been completed, as a state-of-the-art teaching facility for the Social Sciences and Humanities, and creating additional office space in the PAC in vacated classrooms. Alternatively, a subset of the PAC faculty might be relocated to Davenport. Davenport would make an excellent classroom building and would be less successful as an office building. Its location adjacent to the Public Affairs Center and the Olin Library is ideal.

Our traditions of intellectual freedom, diversity, and a sense of personal efficacy as reflected in the core of our academic program create a learning community in which faculty and students are co-learners. Combined with a rich array of co-curricular activities, the University instills the expectation that every member will make a difference in the world.

Despite Wesleyan’s long tradition of intellectual freedom and diversity, and extensive student participation in co-curricular activities, intercollegiate athletics, artistic performances, and intramural programs, there have been structural, physical, and cultural changes at the University that have weakened the sense and experience of community. The initiatives outlined in this section of the strategic plan will provide opportunities for the University to strengthen the sense of community and to sustain our Wesleyan identity.

Wesleyan is committed to maintaining a diverse student body, socioeconomically and geographically, as well as ethnically and racially, to remaining accessible to qualified students and to providing an education that encourages a full range of career choices. This policy is driven by the conviction that a true liberal arts education is incomplete if it takes place in a community that is exclusionary, or where access is based on ability to pay. Financial aid is a universal benefit to all Wesleyan students, whether they are recipients of aid or not. It is what makes it possible for Wesleyan to recruit a group of students of extraordinary character and quality, and in the end it is the quality of one’s fellow students that gives real meaning to the college experience.

The University Plan placed a limit on the amount of student grant aid. As a result, since 1992, the level of student loan carried by Wesleyan's graduating seniors increased to as high as $28,000, exceeding all peer institutions among the COFHE schools.

A heavy debt burden can discourage undergraduates from going on to graduate or professional school, or sometimes from entering less lucrative, more public service-oriented professions. The prospect of debt can also deter desirable applicants, who may turn to colleges with more generous financial aid policies. Wesleyan's long-range financial projections now assume that all new admitted classes remain at 1997-98 loan levels, with unrestricted fund support increasing from 19.1 percent of undergraduate tuition revenue in 1998-99 to 26.3 percent in 2010.

Additional endowment will enable Wesleyan to decrease the loan burden of students to the mean level of peer institutions and reduce to a more manageable amount the resources the University will commit from unrestricted funds to support financial aid. A larger permanent endowment for financial aid will protect our commitment to "need blind" admission from future financial pressures.

Top applicants are currently lost to institutions such as Yale, Brown, Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore. In special cases, outstanding applicants, up to 30 a year, qualifying for financial aid will be offered an enhanced financial aid package, in addition to a named scholarship. The package will include a lower loan level ($10,000 total over 4 years), a work study job as a research intern with a faculty member, summer internships with alumni/ae, and mentoring relationships with a faculty member and an alumnus. The group will be honored at an annual celebratory event to enhance commitment to Wesleyan.

Cross-cultural competence has emerged strongly as a commitment in the Wesleyan faculty’s vision for a twenty-first century education. While much of the focus on cross-cultural competence is on American cultural differences, global interdependence has reemphasized the benefits of a more international student body.

While much can be learned within the classroom, foreign study programs often form a critical element in the development of cross-cultural competence. Almost half of Wesleyan’s graduates spend at least one semester in a study-abroad program. A further rich component of this aspect of a Wesleyan education is the presence of international undergraduate and graduate students on campus. Language-based campus residences, for example, flourish with the presence of a native speaker. While the benefit to American-born students is self-evident, the strong emphasis on cultural awareness at Wesleyan, permeating as it does all aspects of student life, can provide a unique and invaluable educational experience for foreign students, particularly those with a hitherto monocultural experience. The success of the Freeman Scholars Program in bringing highly qualified Asian students to Wesleyan suggests that expansion of foreign student programs to other parts of the world would provide exponential benefits as the student body became more multinational.

Creating a focal point of activity on the Wesleyan campus has been central to the planning process. The current Davenport Campus Center does not achieve this sense of place and focus. It has taken on dual roles as a fast food facility and a student center, and has been unable to perform either role adequately. The underused Cage, Fayerweather and the Squash Courts, when taken together, and treated in conjunction with a major landscaping plan for the east side of Andrus Field along College Row, can be developed to provide such a focal point, and to house central activities for the Wesleyan community. Robert Olson & Associates, Architects, of Boston, have developed an architectural program and conceptual designs for these structures.

The process of community engagement has broadened, and Philip Parsons, the University’s facilities planner, and Robert Olson have completed ongoing discussions with students, faculty and staff. Over a hundred e-mail messages from members of the Wesleyan community have strongly confirmed many of the committee’s initial premises about the need for a Center and the architectural program concept. In addition, members of the planning committee have visited other campus centers, as much to determine what to avoid as what to strive for.

The University Center at Wesleyan will not be driven by retail activity, as is often the case in student centers, but will be planned as a center of shared activities: academic, social and cultural. It will host major speakers, community-wide meetings and student groups. Because it will, in addition, combine facilities for the arts, a variety of centralized dining venues for students, and a faculty dining facility, it will provide a concentration of activity that will give focus to the University community.

The design approach calls for the adaptive reuse of the original Fayerweather Gymnasium and the removal of later additions. Fayerweather and the Cage will be linked by a new structure housing kitchens, servery, dining space, and student performance areas. The building sited between Fayerweather and the Cage, and linked to both, will be scaled to evoke the buildings on College Row (South College, the Chapel and the Theater). The Cage will in turn connect to the former Squash Courts. All buildings in the complex will be opened up to provide a welcoming aspect from the exterior, and ubiquitous daylight on the interior.

The Cage, which has a huge volume and is essentially an indoor field, can be thought of as a kind of town square, or forum, with indoor "streets" going through it, and with multiple levels of constructed interior spaces, accommodating arts facilities, student meeting areas, a multicultural center, a faculty dining room, a cyber-café, and teaching spaces. Activity in the Cage will center on a central meeting area, or forum, overlooked by the upper levels of the building, where visiting speakers and major gatherings will be scheduled. The former squash courts will house an arts media center, studios and teaching spaces, and multimedia technology resources.

Fayerweather lends itself better to offering a central and more formal dining space, and will also include an enlarged post office and other services.

An important benefit of thinking of the program for the Center in terms of community activity rather than a kind of mini-mall is that it will not siphon off retail activity from Main Street in Middletown. Indeed, it will encourage students to use the city, while encouraging city residents to become more aware of activities open to the public at Wesleyan.

The present housing system has a random quality to it and does too little to foster community. The Residential Life Committee has recommended implementing a clear sequence of housing experiences for Wesleyan undergraduates. Progression will be from the center of the campus to its periphery and from the more fully supervised large-group experience of dormitory living to increasing independence. The majority of the recommended improvements can be achieved through administrative changes, and the reassignment and renovation of existing buildings. In general, the committee favors development of residential options closer to downtown Middletown, rather than further away, to encourage more synergy between the University and Main Street.

First-year students have traditionally been housed primarily in the Foss Hill residence halls and Clark Hall, with some overflow at the Butterfield Residence Halls. In the future, second-year students will have more access to single dormitory rooms but will still be exposed to a communal experience, either in the Foss Hill residences, in the Butterfield Residence Halls or in program houses. The Office of Residential Life is currently surveying student opinion about the preferred patterns for first and second year housing assignments. Most juniors will live in apartment buildings with kitchens, and seniors in single family frame houses (considered by Wesleyan students to be the most desirable housing). Frame house neighborhoods will be improved. The creation of a University Center, attractive to all four undergraduate years, will act as a counterbalance to the growing independence of upperclass students and will ensure that they remain tied in to the larger Wesleyan community.

The creation of the Freeman Athletic Center was an important step in attracting students to Wesleyan and strengthening the athletic program as a major component of a Wesleyan education. The Cage and the Squash Courts were not included in this renovation, and the activities they house are consequently separated from other athletic activity, besides being housed in obsolete facilities. Without constructing new squash courts of the new, larger competition size, Wesleyan will be at a competitive disadvantage and soon will not be able to host a home schedule.

Estimates for bringing the squash courts into compliance with the new size requirements and upgrading the Cage with appropriate locker facilities approach or exceed the cost of constructing new squash facilities adjacent to the Freeman Athletic Center. The plan being developed will provide attractive modern facilities for basketball and squash, both of which are popular with Wesleyan students, and will support other athletic programs such as volleyball. The plan will make the Cage and old squash courts available for the development of the University Center.

The development of a focal point for Wesleyan affects and is affected by the entire campus, and indeed the University’s relationship to its immediate neighborhood and to Middletown. Rolland/Towers, the University’s landscape architects, are developing longer-term landscape improvement plans and a master parking plan to strengthen the sense of connection between the various component pieces of the campus, and between the University and Middletown’s Main Street. A pilot project renovating a group of University-owned frame houses and improving the surrounding landscape on Pine Street has been completed over the summer.

Wesleyan’s plans for a University Center are designed to support rather than detract from Middletown’s Main Street revitalization plans. The attractiveness of Middletown to prospective students and faculty in terms of retail activity and cultural opportunities may play a significant long-term role in sustaining excellence.

A Wesleyan education teaches its graduates to question and to explore connections, to have an eye for complexity, and to make commitments with a larger good than their own in mind. Consequently, many of the proposals in this report are about tools for connection and integration and for building a more interwoven community. This is true of student social and extracurricular life on campus, the academic experience of undergraduates, or the relationship of scholarship to teaching. The goal of planning has been to make the Wesleyan experience of these three areas seamless. Ideally, students will make richer and more varied connections with a wider range of friends in their time at Wesleyan, because of changes in dining, the consolidation of certain student activities, and the creation of a true crossroads or town square for the community in the University Center. Increased support for financial aid will also be critical here to sustain both excellence and variety.

Students will be exposed to a broader range of ideas, opinions, and intellectual and cultural experiences, because of curricular improvements and restructuring of the advising system. They will be better equipped to make connections between those various ideas and experiences. Improved student/faculty ratios will play a role here, as will more incentives and opportunities for faculty and students to interact.

The quest for excellence will be sustained by a strong reaffirmation of our commitment to bringing new scholarship into the classroom. This requires a larger faculty and the resources to hire only the best. The educational experience that comes from seeing the creation of knowledge first-hand will continue to set Wesleyan graduates apart from their peers at other institutions.

Underpinning these aspirations is the need for a strong sense of place, of a community that has focus. The plans outlined here will, if all goes well, achieve this, while creating a full range of essential educational facilities, including the extensive but judicious use of technology.