March 25, 2013

Dear Campus Community,

The Year of Planning is in its final stage. After receiving nearly 1,500 initiative submissions from the Colorado College community, our four committees have submitted 42 initiatives to the steering committee for consideration. These initiatives were thoughtful and bold ways for us to achieve the goals we announced in January at the Winter Conference.

As I have said since the beginning of our process, for this plan to be truly strategic, it cannot be a 'wish list'. We must make choices. To begin to focus our plan, the steering committee met last week for a retreat to review and prioritize the initiatives. This retreat was extremely successful, as we identified both common and transformative ideas. In fact, it made our job easier that there was much overlap among the initiatives submitted by the committees.

In the coming weeks, I will meet with the committee chairs to relay the steering committee's suggestions. After continuing discussions over the next month, I will share the emerging shape of the plan with our Board of Trustees, faculty and staff in May. In July, our trustees will review the final plan and, with their approval, we will release it to the entire community in the fall.

Finally, I extend my sincere thanks to all of you for your help in creating what I think will be an ambitious plan to guide the next decade of Colorado College's future. Our year of planning has been a community effort and, therefore, I am optimistic that together we will make our plan a reality. As always, if there are questions please visit our year of planning website or let me know.

With warm regards,

Jill