Goal: Renew our role as a leader in 21st Century education

Strategic Rationale

To renew our leadership role in education, we must take the lead in innovating for our times, building on existing strengths to respond to new student needs and intellectual developments across the disciplines. Furthermore, we must demonstrate the value of our model, and in so doing, create a new assessment methodology that will enhance our authority and influence in the academic community. Our integrative, cross-disciplinary approach is the ideal basis for creating new curriculum clusters and interdisciplinary courses that respond to new student and societal needs. Recent gifts and grants have positioned the College to make major strides in the areas of Environmental Science and Technology in the Arts, among other opportunities. We are also well positioned to pioneer new partnerships and concentrations with sister institutions in the United States and abroad, and leveraging our connection to New York City.

By raising our profile and reinforcing our leadership role, we will expand our intellectual and cultural influence. In doing so, we will attract and support excellent faculty and a larger pool of qualified students, whose accomplishments will in turn burnish our reputation further.

Strategic Priorities

• Innovate in curricular development, student assessment, technology application, service-learning, and institutional partnerships built on our unique strengths in student-centered and practice-based learning
  • Develop a robust, innovative and multi-disciplinary 21st Century curriculum that takes advantage of our model to respond to diverse student needs and new academic developments across the disciplines
  • Create a new model for assessing student outcomes, built on our inherent culture of student learning assessment and evaluation, and export this model for broader adoption in the higher education community
  • Apply new technology for instruction, collaboration, research and assessment
  • Build bridges to the world of work and service beyond the college
  • Create new kinds of institutional partnerships that expand our portfolio and increase access to areas of student interest.
• Raise the visibility and recognition of the achievements of the College, its faculty, students, alums, and staff
  • Define and develop Sarah Lawrence’s institutional identity to ensure that internal and external communications are concrete, consistent, and sufficiently compelling to raise visibility of the College and enhance its reputation
  • Pursue national and international media coverage of SLC’s unique educational model and its benefits
  • Develop media opportunities for the President to position the College
  • Expand opportunities for faculty to pursue subject-matter expert roles in the media
  • Increase the number of faculty scholarly and creative achievement citations in key national and international media and
  • Highlight alumni achievements of note in developing promotional and media material
  • Expand communications reach to a diverse group of high school students through print, electronic, social and other media