Berea College is using a dynamic, flexible strategic planning process to capture both our great work underway and our hopes for an even better Berea. Titled “Vision into Action,” this new form of strategic planning is focused on ensuring that our ideas are translated into real results as quickly and effectively as possible.
“Vision into Action” is a testament to the high-quality feedback received during President Nixon’s Listening Tour and Town Hall sessions—an open, honest, collaborative sharing of ideas and insights, hopes and dreams, questions and concerns. These ideas generated actionable strategies that enhance the student experience, foster academic excellence, and strengthen our campus community. We are excited to share our bold Vision for the future and the Actions that will bring that Vision to life.
Vision
Berea will use our current strengths to create the “next horizon” of higher education. Berea is and will be:
Berea’s bold vision for the future features new forms of thinking, working, and creating community. Berea is ready to claim:
Action
Students First
The Student Experience in our Beloved Community
Berea aspires to offer an environment of possibility and promise, where students can further develop the gifts they bring to us, access resources to grow, explore knowledge to expand horizons, and be empowered to shape the complex world ahead.
Emphasize the importance of belonging, meaning, and mattering, through actions as well as words
Improve counseling, health, and support services
Launch new trainings (acting on Campus Climate Survey results)
Create outdoor connections and joy campus
Connect academic, labor, and co-curricular experiences
Create collaborative, efficient student success teams of advisors and mentors
Emphasize academic excellence achieved through the liberal arts, including Berea-unique forms of active, applied, and aspirational learning
Foster understanding of Berea opportunities via student communication tools and practices
Define and launch Berea’s Pinnacle Experience–our unique four-year student journey
Leverage Berea’s campus sites (ex: farm, forest) and partnerships
Encourage engagement with centers, clubs, ensembles, athletics, and more
Design “immersive” summer or semester experiences
Berea Balance
Serving Self, Campus, and “One Blood, All Peoples”
Berea aspires to create a culture of radical love: our community welcomes all into an integrated ecosystem that connects the impartial love of all peoples to the love of place, self, and service.
Employ effective mediation of internal conflicts (such as through an ombuds structure)
Encourage opportunities that promote faculty/staff/student connection and coalition-building
Nurture a culture of shared governance, accountability, and impartial love
Promote career growth and leadership opportunities that facilitate a culture of impartial love
Create a culture that respects work/life balance, values being “alive in work,” and includes time for thought, reflection, joy, and fulfillment
Reduce silo-ing and busy-ness across campus by creating more intentional time for collaboration
Enact workplace equity, such as through holistic auditing of job descriptions
Increase operational awareness relating to time, planning, execution, assessment processes
Continue to engage deeply with Appalachian communities
Value and strengthen our alumni networks
Coordinate efforts to maximize student engagement with regional communities
Elevate community voice and ensure collaborative planning with community partners
Financial Freedom
Resources & Infrastructure for Choice, Opportunity, and Stability
Berea aspires to create new models of freedom, mobility, and stability: Berea will steward its human, environmental, technological, and financial resources to provide a stable and secure foundation for Berea’s next visionary chapter.
Invent next phase of Berea’s unique student financial aid/support model
Determine current enrollment goals and admissions strategy
Improve faculty/staff compensation
Maintain careful stewardship of endowment
Center philanthropy on meaningful donor and alumni relationships
Develop new campus Master Plan for our natural/built environment
Ensure cutting-edge and back-up Information Technology structures
Update and expand ecological sustainability efforts, recognizing climate change pressures
Integrate Continuous Improvement initiatives across campus
Our Great Commitments
Our Eight Great Commitments inspire and are interwoven into this framework and future action items
Berea aspires to continually uphold and advance the inspirational ideals of our Great Commitments: we strive to build a culture of possibility and hope, strengthening our resolve to bring our values and principles to address the most pressing challenges of our time.
Strategic Framework: Materials
Campus materials relating to the Strategic Framework are available in this password protected folder.
