Colgate's Strategic Plan

What is significant about the Strategic Plan is not so much what it contains, but what it does not.  The Plan’s emphasis on “Diversity” fails to include Greek life, a focus on the traditional academic areas of math, science, economics, American history & civics, and classical literature.  The self-imposed standards for “diversity” result in discrimination and segregation of the student body.

Prioritization of the Colgate University Strategic Plan
Endorsed by the Board of Trustees, January 30, 2005
(Read the complete Strategic Plan here)

Capital projects:

• Case Library and Information Commons $60.4 million (cost over budget: $20.4M – 51%)
• Robert Ho Science Center $56.3 million (cost over original budget: $16.3M– 40.8%)
• Route 12B residential complex  $16,380,000 (plus renovation of Greek houses, now called Broad Street properties)

Financial Aid:

• Enhance scholarship programs for academically talented students
• Reduce or eliminate loans for economically disadvantaged students (loan forgiveness)
• Implement “preferential needs analysis” for students with financial resources who require modest assistance
• Increase financial aid to attract students in arts and athletics

Research & Creativity:

• Support faculty chairs (gender neutrality requires all leadership be referred to as furniture)
• Develop and launch institutes (Upstate 2004; Conflict, Ethics & Global Change 2007; Creativity, Media & the Arts 2006; Interdisciplinary Science, 2007)
• Expand research fellowship programs

Diversity:

• Establish the Arnold Sio Chair and fund the associated faculty seminar
• Successful execution of the charge to the Diversity Council to affirm that individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity or sexual orientation fully benefit from educational opportunities, in and out of the classroom (faculty efforts to establish “Queer Studies” minor moving forward)
• Develop funding for on-going diversity training for faculty, staff and administrators

Technology:

• Wireless in campus building - possibly with extension to the immediate Hamilton area
• State-of-the-art technology to selected classrooms
• Technology available to all students (e.g. PDAs, IPODs)

Residential Education: “Residential Education is an approach that seeks to capture all the educational moments (inside and outside of the classroom) that take place during a student’s time on campus…Colgate sets out an important institutional goal: to ensure that its students graduate with …both the traditional competencies (communication skills and leadership capacity) and emerging competencies (information literacy, intercultural competency, and community building.” (Competency in economics, math, science and American history not a priority for a Colgate liberal arts degree.)

• Develop four signature campus life programs (Debate, Student Media, the COVE, and Outdoor Education)
• Fund first-year (freshman) and sophomore year experience programs
• Develop and fund the Wellness Initiative

International Programs:

• Establish an office of International Affairs
• Create and endow student fellowships that support opportunities for international experience
• Facilitate international faculty and student exchanges in teaching and research

Athletics:

• Develop long-range plans for facilities
• Develop academic support for student-athletes
• Ensure gender equity

Regional Initiatives:

• Upstate Institute/COVE (Center for Outreach, Volunteerism, and Education)
• Outdoor Education
• Hamilton Initiative (Colgate ownership of 30 downtown properties or businesses)

Arts:

• Create an arts institute to sponsor, coordinate and promote arts programming
• Provide support for a new theatre curriculum
• Organize and launch an annual Creative Arts Series