Six committees of faculty, staff and students are currently being assembled to discuss how best to implement the goals of the Strategic Plan adopted by the College last year. Oberlin’s provost Alfred MacKay hopes to have recommendations from these committees by the end of the first semester.

After nearly two years of drafting, the Strategic Plan was approved by the General Faculty and the Board of Trustees. The plan lays out a series of areas in which the College can improve, ranging from revamping its curriculum to internationalizing its student body. It is also as vague as it is comprehensive, providing no actual strategies for actions and leaving much open for interpretation. This is where MacKay hopes the committees will clarify the process.

“I think of [the plan] as a road map,” he said. “It gives us the outline and the direction, but it doesn’t have all the details. The job of these committees is to develop proposals or recommendations which will then go to the regular faculty governance structure to be implemented.”

Chairs and faculty members have been selected for most of the committees but have not yet been made public.

Two of the committees, Curricular Pathways and Curricular Support, are focused on adapting and revitalizing Oberlin’s curriculum. One committee, Build Campus Community, is focused on student life. Another, Support and Build the Faculty, deals with questions of benefits and hiring for Oberlin professors. Internationalize Oberlin seeks to add more of a global perspective to the Oberlin experience both in terms of the curriculum and student body. Finally, Environmental Sustainability addresses the concerns in the sustainability amendment added to the plan during the last week of deliberation by politics professor Harlan Wilson.

According to MacKay, each committee, with the exception of Support and Build the Faculty, will have at least two student members to serve as liaisons to the student body. Students who volunteer for these positions will be interviewed by Student Senate, though some committee chairs have already made recommendations of students they would like to see serve.

Noticeably absent from the list of committees is one dealing with the concerns of ethnic minorities within the Oberlin community, concerns which were laid out in a last minute add-on by professors James Millette of the African American studies department and A.G. Miller of the religion department last year. These concerns are, however, part of the mission statements for several of the committees.

“Those themes got put where it seemed appropriate,” MacKay said. “We want this to be a manageable process. If you’ve got 15 working groups, it’s not going to be possible to get going.”

The current goal for the project is to wrap up with final recommendations around December, but MacKay now thinks that “may have been too ambitious.” He does, however, hope that the curricular changes will start to be seen by the time the next course catalogue is put together.

The committees are, of course, charged with implementing strategies within the framework laid out in the plan, but MacKay does not rule out the possibility that new ideas may be introduced.

“All wisdom was not completed in March of 2005,” he said. “We do have a plan, but I hope that we won’t squelch innovation.”

Students interested in joining committees are encouraged to contact Student Senate or the Dean of Students office.