Goal: Cultivate a Vibrant, Diverse and Engaged Community

Strategic Rationale

We are committed to cultivating a community of students, faculty, staff and alumnae/i that produces graduates with the skills they need to make a difference in their own and others’ lives.

To sustain a learning environment that promotes intellectual challenge, diversity and a positive social dynamic on campus, the College aims to achieve an undergraduate and graduate applicant pool sufficient to ensure student selectivity and yield.

In addition to addressing students’ academic needs, we must also support their social and physical well-being through graduation, and help them to prepare for the world beyond college by connecting with and contributing to the larger community -- locally, nationally and globally.

Strategic Priorities

• Attract a diverse pool of creative and intellectually motivated students
  • Enlarge the pool of applicants to enhance selectivity and diversity by refining the focus of recruiting efforts, and increasing our direct outreach to guidance counselors, prospective applicants and parents.
  • Improve our external communications and associated admissions recruiting materials to better articulate the value of a Sarah Lawrence education, including our preeminence in creative fields.
  • Achieve a greater co-education balance
  • Identify and emphasize key disciplines that support recruitment by more clearly demonstrating the depth and value of a Sarah Lawrence education.
  • Increase affordability while responding to institutional financial priorities.

• Support a lively and engaging campus environment that fosters social interactions, diversity, student satisfaction and long term attachment to the College
  • Create and re-design campus spaces to promote social interactions among students, facilitate student-faculty connections, and provide student services
  • Enhance campus social life
  • Continue to foster and promote a campus climate that respects and cultivates diversity in all of its forms; ensure that diversity initiatives across departments (Admission, Student Affairs, Human Resources, curricular development) are coordinated and overseen by a senior member of the College’s administration.
  • Pursue NCAA Division III membership to ensure that intramural and intercollegiate athletics remain integrated into the core mission of the College
  • Integrate graduate students into college life
  • Improve intramural communications about College activities and events

• Expand student opportunities to participate in and prepare for the world beyond college
  • Enhance co-curricular community engagement
  • Create new undergraduate and graduate programs