During implementation of the last five-year plan, it became evident that a higher level of student engagement than is now the case is essential to the future vitality and success of the College. Engaging students more fully can also have a compounding effect that will help attract other motivated students and raise the College's reputation. Student engagement, therefore, is the focus of the current five-year strategic plan and its three goals.
The first goal recognizes that the recruitment and retention of interested and motivated high school students will result in students who are engaged once they begin their course of study at the College. The second goal continues this theme by further engaging students via a demanding program of study and opportunities for experiential learning and student self-empowerment. The third goal suggests that student engagement in learning is heightened by a rich extracurricular and co-curricular life supported by adequate programs and facilities.
The College will use the National Survey of Student Engagement, a self-study in which it has participated for several years, to measure progress against national norms.
Goal 1: Recruit and retain a more motivated, capable, and diverse student body.
Objective 1: Increase financial aid to new and returning students.
Initiative 1: Increase the College's endowment by $30 million for the new scholarships included in the Strategic Plan. (Top priority.)
Initiative 2: Develop a merit scholarship program to reward students for excellent academic work at Randolph-Macon.
Initiative 3: Increase the need-based financial aid for capable students who will be successful academically at the College.
Initiative 4: Create a merit scholarship program for capable students interested in the natural and mathematical sciences.
Objective 2: Continue to develop a marketing and admissions strategy that more successfully recruits a more motivated, capable, and diverse student body.
Initiative 1: Identify and consider all measures of student success in the admissions process.
Initiative 2: Enroll more students interested in the sciences.
Initiative 3: Continue to integrate and coordinate academic and athletic recruiting.
Initiative 4: Assess and revise the integrated marketing and communications plan to support directly the "peaks of excellence" and the goals and objectives of the new strategic plan.
Initiative 5: Improve campus facilities in order to facilitate recruitment.
Initiative 6: Involve faculty and staff more efficiently in the admissions process and find ways to use them more effectively.
Objective 3: Increase the racial, ethnic, economic, geographic, religious, and academic diversity of the College community.
Initiative 1: Develop scholarship programs targeted to minority populations in order to diversify the student body.
Initiative 2: Encourage faculty and student participation in the recruitment of minority students.
Initiative 3: Develop targeted retention efforts for special populations and minority students.
Initiative 4: Diversify the faculty.
Initiative 5: Diversify the staff.
Objective 4: Retain better the more motivated, capable, and diverse members of the student body.
Initiative 1: Revise College policies to increase student accountability.
Initiative 2: Review housing policies as they relate to the living-learning connection and revise them as necessary.
Initiative 3: Develop rewards for continuing students for their academic performance at the College.
Initiative 4: Improve the adjustment of students to the academic and co-curricular expectations of the College.
Goal 2: Increase the level of academic rigor and student engagement.
Objective 1: Set higher standards for faculty, staff, and students.
Initiative 1: Review academic policies to ensure that they reflect an appropriate degree of academic rigor and revise them where necessary.
Initiative 2: Encourage and assist faculty in using active learning pedagogies.
Initiative 3: Explore requiring a senior comprehensive examination in the major.
Initiative 4: Continue to reinvigorate the Academic Integrity System.
Initiative 5: Develop and implement strategies to make advising a developmental process.
Initiative 6: Develop more consistent academic expectations within and among academic departments and monitor them more effectively.
Initiative 7: Reward student academic achievement more effectively.
Initiative 8: Develop further the tutoring program and the faculty support of the work of the Higgins Academic Center.
Objective 2: Develop further the experiential learning opportunities at the College as ways of increasing student engagement. For example, the "peaks of excellence," student research, international study-travel, and academic internships, as well as service learning, and out-of-class activities for academic courses.
Initiative 1: Require all students to participate in either student research, international study-travel, or an academic internship.
Initiative 2: Devote the January term to academic credit-bearing experiential educational opportunities.
Initiative 3: Assist all disciplines in becoming more involved in experiential education, including student research, internships, service learning, and international study-travel.
Initiative 4: Encourage students to participate in non-credit-bearing experiential learning, such as non-academic internships, career shadowing, etc.
Initiative 5: Require a credit-bearing capstone experience of all majors.
Initiative 6: Promote student research by a creative use of the January term..
Initiative 7: Explore using SURF to waive curricular research requirements.
Initiative 8: Clarify and strengthen the linkage between all College experiential programs.
Initiative 9: Assess and revise the extended orientation program for all students.
Objective 3: Revise the general education curriculum and implement the revisions.
Objective 4: Empower students to act on their own, giving them more authority,
responsibility, and accountability.
Initiative 1: In recruiting and admissions, assess and revise current practices related to student accountability, authority, and responsibility.
Initiative 2: Implement a program allowing students to create individualized majors and minors.
Initiative 3: Increase accountability and responsibility in the orientation and first-year programs.
Initiative 4: Review social and academic regulations and revise them where necessary to ensure that they empower students and hold them accountable.
Initiative 5: Allow students to transact academic business with less faculty oversight.
Initiative 6: Create and institutionalize additional opportunities for students and decision-makers at the College to communicate.
Goal 3: Improve the College extracurricular and co-curricular programs.
Objective 1: Emphasize character, leadership, and community development.
Initiative 1: Define and support the qualities of character the College hopes to promote in students.
Initiative 2: Provide support for the development of leadership in students.
Initiative 3: Work intentionally to develop a stronger sense of connection and belonging.
Initiative 4: Develop more fully the potential of athletics to promote character and leadership.
Initiative 5: Help Greek societies to exemplify better their founding values.
Initiative 6: Develop character through service to others.
Initiative 7: Create programs in residence halls that enable students to take responsibility for enforcing the rules.
Objective 2: Improve the living environment for learning.
Initiative 1: Review housing options for all students and revise where necessary.
Initiative 2: Design/create and refurbish common spaces that promote interaction between faculty and students.
Initiative 3: Improve the living conditions in the traditional residence halls.
Initiative 4: Continue to design/develop Thomas Branch Hall as a model for living and learning.
Objective 3: Improve the College's co-curricular and extracurricular programs.
Initiative 1: Promote and support campus-wide lectures, film series, and concert series.
Initiative 2: Provide training in the necessary leadership and organizational skills to students in campus clubs and organizations.
Initiative 3: Develop better transportation options to assist students in availing themselves of the opportunities of the Richmond area.
Initiative 4: Create and support new traditions that encourage and support the mission of the College.
Initiative 5: Create and implement a comprehensive program of volunteer opportunities for students.
Initiative 6: Enhance and support ongoing special programs and academic classes at the Brock Center.
Initiative 7: Create opportunities for the responsible use of alcohol among students of legal drinking age.
Initiative 8: Plan at least one high-quality, alcohol-free event for students every weekend.
Objective 4: Create appropriate spaces for student life.
Initiative 1: Complete a policy review of space usage and reservation.
Initiative 2: Renovate and expand the Campus Center.
Initiative 3: Expand Macon Coffee and create an on-campus pub/café.
Initiative 4: Create spaces for commuter students.
Initiative 5: Renovate Crenshaw and expand the athletic playing facilities.
Initiative 6: Create appropriate spaces for students to hold meetings and events with a meal.
Initiative 7: Expand special interest housing opportunities.
Notes on Implementation
Each goal, objective, and initiative of the Strategic Plan is stated in language suggesting its implementation, not merely its study or consideration. To do less would invite a period characterized mainly by report-writing, not accomplishment. The implementation of the initiatives will involve the regular governing powers of the trustees, the administration, the faculty, and the students of the College as defined by the College's system of shared governance. The initiatives proposed in the Plan and the activities intended to realize them are to be evaluated by their success in furthering the overarching goals and objectives of the Plan. Consequently, the Plan is intended to be dynamic and will evolve over its lifetime as initiatives are modified or replaced.
The College's last strategic plan was implemented through a partnership of the five Goal Teams, the Planning and Budget Committee, and the College administration. The current plan will be implemented through a partnership of the College administration, the Planning and Budget Committee, the Strategic Planning Committee, the faculty, the staff, and the student body.
Each of the initiatives has been assigned by the Strategic Planning Committee to a member of the College's senior staff. That staff member will be responsible for appointing a person or group that will be responsible for implementing the specific activities of the Plan. The senior staff member responsible will also supervise the assessment of implementation activities and will be the conduit through whom will come funding requests and proposals to add new initiatives and activities or modify existing ones.
The Planning and Budget Committee will evaluate the funding requests it receives and recommend appropriate budget allocations. It will also receive the assessment reports from the implementers and use them to evaluate future funding requests.
The Strategic Planning Committee will have a continuing role. It will meet on an annual basis with the Planning and Budget Committee and the senior staff to help to assess the previous year's progress and to chart the course for the coming year.
Since those who bear the ultimate responsibility for the implementation of the Plan report directly to the President of the College, the President will hold them responsible for the ongoing success of the initiatives which have been assigned to them. He will exercise this responsibility with the assistance of the reports he will receive from the Planning and Budget Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee.
[Strategic Plan Archives]
[Administrative Assessment Reports]
[Portrait of a College: a Top Line Summary]
(Only faculty and staff at R-MC have access to view this report.)
[Strategic Planning Committee Sharepoint]
(Only members of the committee have access to login
and view the contents of the Sharepoint site)