Strategic Plan

Presidential Introduction

This is a special time for Albion College. Confidence continues to build on campus and in our community, even as colleges and towns like ours face imposing challenges. Our collective confidence comes from an emerging consensus on the path ahead. It comes from a renewed belief that a residential liberal arts college that has clear focus, creative energy, and innovative partnerships can accomplish anything.

We often say that Albion is a microcosm of America, and that Albion's challenges are America's challenges. We know that we are not immune to the social, economic and environmental realities that we face, both as a college and as a community. Indeed, it is these challenges that make our mission all the more timely and important.

The Four Pillars of the Strategic Plan

Albion College will be an exemplary private, residential, undergraduate liberal arts college. To achieve this goal, Albion College will create a culture of innovation and collaboration that will:

Focus on the Intentional Integration of Knowledge

Albion College will support the intentional integration of knowledge that is the heart of a liberal arts education. We will provide and enhance curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular programming that creates opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to grow and develop collaboratively as informed scholars and ethical people. We will promote teaching, research, scholarship, and creative and professional activity that forge a holistic understanding of our community, our vocation, and our world and develop practical skills for democratic citizenship.

Build an Open, Diverse, and Inclusive College Community

Albion College will become a stronger, more diverse, and more inclusive community. We will enroll outstanding students and hire excellent faculty and staff of diverse backgrounds, and we will help all members of the College community gain the intercultural competencies essential for ethical action. We will provide programmatic and financial resources to ensure the success of all members of the College community and maintain high levels of personal attention to help students thrive.

Forge Sustainable Local Partnerships and Global Collaborations

Albion College will build and strengthen partnerships with its host community and around the world that help solve urgent local and global social issues. We will address the pressing economic, educational, and environmental needs in our community through curricular and co-curricular programs that encourage our students to apply the problem-solving skills at the core of the liberal arts and through experiences, research, and service that build the intercultural capacity of students, faculty, and staff. Albion will be nationally recognized for creative, sustainable partnerships that mutually improve the quality of life for both citizens and students.

Exercise Effective Stewardship of All Resources

Albion College will effectively steward its resources through budgeting, planning, and fundraising to provide an exemplary liberal arts education. We will leverage our current resources to their fullest capacity and identify those areas in which responsible growth can position us to be a model for excellence. The College will support excellence among students, faculty, and staff through continuously refining the financial plan, updating the facilities' master plan, and implementing a comprehensive capital campaign.

Consistent with our liberal arts tradition, we believe it is preferable to apply general principles and creative thinking rather than to memorize and blindly follow a preordained set of rules or plans. With all of this in mind, we have built a plan that identifies shared values and general tools while encouraging creative thinking with respect to specific actions. Wherever possible we have honored existing governance structures and stayed within established decision making processes as we considered implementation. And, above all, we have encouraged audacity in expectation of outcomes.