A White Paper on Strategic Thinking

By Thomas J. Hochstettler, President
September 27, 2005

Introduction

Lewis & Clark College stands today at the threshold of a great future, a future in which our College can become an acknowledged national leader in preparing students to address the momentous issues confronting our nation and the world. We begin from a position of tremendous strength. For nearly 140 years, Lewis & Clark has grown continually in stature, from being a small local institute, to being a leader regionally and now nationally in innovative approaches to effective teaching and ground-breaking scholarship. The pace of change and improvement at Lewis & Clark has accelerated in the last decade, to the point where we are now poised to break through into the first rank of American institutions of liberal learning.

Even as we have moved forward, however, so too have those institutions with whom we compete for students, faculty, and resources. In order to improve the quality and reputation of our programs relative both to our own history and to the achievements of other colleges, we must as an institution adopt the habit of thinking strategically about how to achieve and maintain the highest level of distinction. At the very least, strategic thinking demands of us a commitment to examine alternative ways of providing education and of conducting scholarship. Beyond that, it demands of us a willingness to experiment and, as occasion warrants, to abandon structures, activities, and conventions that served us well in the past but that no longer suit our aspirations. It also demands of us that we commit resources of time and treasure to leverage our current strengths and to create new foundations for excellence.

In the weeks ahead, I will be convening a Task Force to undertake an inquiry into the strategic direction of the College. This group will be broadly based and include trustees, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of the three schools that comprise Lewis & Clark College. My intention in composing the Task Force is to err on the side of inclusivity rather than to risk excluding voices that need and want to be heard. This White Paper is my effort to create a framework for the discussions of the Task Force over the course of the next year. In terms of process, I expect that the Task Force will want to organize itself into project groups for the focused examination of certain critical issues—to be decided by the Task Force itself—that are confronting the College and that must be addressed if we are to move forward in creating our preferred future. The intended product of this exercise will be a report representing a broad consensus, to the extent that consensus is possible in so complex an institution, concerning our long-term priorities, which in turn will serve as a touchstone for shaping our initiatives and actions in the years ahead. To my knowledge, Lewis & Clark has not engaged in an institution-wide exercise of this nature for at least the last two decades, and I am convinced that the time is ripe for us to sit down together as a community and examine our first principles as a basis for informed planning in the future.

Why Now?

For many reasons, the opening of the new academic year provides an opportune moment for the Lewis & Clark community to begin a conversation about the future of the College. Your “new” president now has a year of experience behind him, a year of getting to know the College and of assessing the great strengths and many opportunities that are harbored within this talented community. It is now time to begin with you to chart our next decade. The recent arrival on campus of Julio de Paula, the new Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Denis Ransmeier as the new Vice President for Business and Finance/Treasurer, and Phil Akers, the new Vice President for Institutional Advancement has now rounded out the leadership team for the College, marking a fresh point of departure for us all to move forward together to our next level of excellence.

There are other reasons for pausing at this juncture to reflect on our future. Programmatically, the College has prospered in the last decade, having risen in academic standing in each of our schools. The ranks of regular faculty today number some 215 regular, full-time professors. Enrollment yields today reflect our growing competitiveness among the country’s most selective institutions, and our students continue to improve in quality, cohort after cohort. The resources at our disposal to support students through scholarships and research grants have grown substantially in recent years, a trend that has been reflected in the enhanced selectivity of our admission processes. Sustaining our current level of excellence and moving forward responsively and creatively as a leader in American and international higher education will require careful thought and informed planning.

Much strategic thinking has already been done over the last few years. One of the first tasks we must undertake in the next year is that of integrating the planning that has already been done within each of the schools and institution-wide in the recent past. These plans include the Law School’s “Looking to the Future” (June, 2003), the Graduate School’s “Road Ahead” (April, 2004), the “Report of the Commission on Academic Priorities in the Arts and Sciences” (May, 2002), the “Report of the Commission on Teaching in the Arts and Sciences” (November, 2002), and the “Science Facilities Expansion Feasibility Study” (April, 2002), and the recommendations from the Task Force on Writing and Speaking from 2001. None of these plans can be treated in isolation, because each has broad financial and other implications that affect the institution as a whole. Moreover, Lewis & Clark’s “Conditional Use Master Plan” that was approved by the City of Portland in May, 1998, will expire in 2008, and work needs to begin soon on preparing revisions and updates to that public document.

The improved facilities on the Lewis & Clark campus represent a solid physical basis for moving forward. This spring, the College successfully concluded a decade-long program of capital improvements, many of them part of the Signature Campaign, which have enormously enhanced the programmatic capacity of all three of our schools. To canvas the sweeping successes of these years, one need only cast an eye around campus: the James F. Miller Center for the Humanities; the Fred W. Fields Center for the Visual Arts; the Aubrey R. Watzek Library expansion; the renovated Rogers Hall on South Campus for the Graduate School; Louise and Erskine Wood Sr. Hall and the renovated Paul L. Boley Law Library at the Law School; and last year, John R. Howard Hall as the new home for the Social Sciences and for Religious Studies and Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences. An impressive list. The substantial increase in the quantity and quality of undergraduate housing has rounded out a period of growth in sheer square footage unprecedented in the history of Lewis & Clark. The confidence and forward momentum represented by this period of building demand of us that we contemplate seriously and critically the next steps—including planning for the next capital campaign—that we must take in carrying out our mission.

Context

Lewis & Clark is in many ways a rising star in American higher education. We are famous for being an institution that values excellence in teaching and that promotes the integration of instruction with scholarship. Individual programs and specific interdisciplinary themes, such as the environment and international affairs, to name just two examples, have likewise become hallmarks for Lewis & Clark. We must take care to continue to nurture our strengths. In some areas, however, we seem to have reached a plateau. While undergraduate research opportunities have flourished in some disciplines, other fields have been less well served. To be honest, some of our academic programs have in recent years not been so successful in maintaining their upward momentum, areas where pride of place is now held by other institutions. Careful review and assessment are called for in addressing needs in those areas where we are not currently of the first water.

Three other pieces of contextual background need to be kept in mind. First, although we choose to compete with institutions possessing greater resources than we can at present marshal, Lewis & Clark possesses an endowment, which, while substantial at $180 million, is considerably smaller than many of our competitor institutions. The College has enjoyed a period of growth in its investment portfolio in recent years, but the accretion in value that comes from good portfolio management will not by itself be sufficient to allow us to achieve our ambitions. Growing the endowment through additional gifts must be a first order of business if the College is to maintain its current stature, even more so if we are to grow in quality and reputation.

Second, we currently owe to our bondholders $109 million, a heavy debt when compared to our endowment in order of magnitude. That debt is well structured, and we are in equilibrium with regard to servicing that obligation and to funding our normal operating and capital budgets. In fact, Lewis & Clark College currently enjoys a “desk” rating from Standard and Poor’s of Aa, due in large measure to the excellence of our programs and to the strong fiscal controls that we have in place for the prudent management of our resources. At the same time, any additional borrowing by the College must be so structured as to safeguard our financial rating and thereby to ensure a lower cost of servicing debt. In practical terms, this means that no additional debt can be taken on unless such increased obligations result in programs that provide additional funds sufficient to service that debt, or until such time as the level of existing borrowings is substantially reduced.

Third, we must never lose sight of nor underestimate the importance of our location. It is a commonplace that Portland and its environs are among the most livable regions in the country, and our ability to attract and retain top-flight faculty and staff is made all the easier by the manifold attractions of our city. By the same token, potential students are far more inclined to matriculate at Lewis & Clark once they have visited the College and seen the sheer physical beauty that surrounds us on this campus. Beyond that, the business and professional opportunities that Portland represents provide our students nearby opportunities for civic engagement, internships, service, and employment that are equal or superior to those to be found at any other college or university in this country. To the extent that our cultural, economic, and physical environment can be a material benefit in our efforts to move the institution forward, we have every advantage in charting a future of greatness for Lewis & Clark.

Issues

To be clear at the outset, the mission of Lewis & Clark College remains as it has been since it was established by a vote of the Board of Trustees in 1997:

The mission of Lewis & Clark College is to know the traditions of the liberal arts, to test their boundaries through ongoing exploration, and to hand on to successive generations the tools and discoveries of this quest. By these means the College pursues the aims of all liberal learning: to seek knowledge for its own sake and to prepare for civic leadership.

As we begin to conceptualize the future in terms of this mission, several fundamental issues demand our attention. To many minds, these issues and the questions they raise may seem to have been decided long ago or to be so self-evident as to need no further analysis. This may indeed be the case, but such assumptions nevertheless need on occasion to be reexamined, if only for the purpose of reaffirming them.

1. The Academic Program

The historical mix of undergraduate liberal arts education with professional graduate programs in education, counseling, and law has evolved over time, partly driven by student needs, partly determined by internal programmatic imperatives. Given our current constellation of programs across the three schools, are there creative ways that we can bring greater cohesion to Lewis & Clark that will at once enhance the quality and reputation of each of the schools and at the same time of the College as a whole? Put another way, are we taking full advantage of the inherent synergies within and among our departments and schools? More broadly, are we adequately fulfilling our mission and doing all that we can do to meet the educational needs of our students in ways suitable to the times in which we live?

Although we are quick to acknowledge and affirm the benefits that adhere to all of our academic programs that derive from the tripartite structure of our College, we have not gone nearly far enough in developing the models of cooperation and collaboration that can take fullest advantage of our small size and our range of programs. I believe that the constellation of resources and programs at Lewis & Clark today position us to become a national leader in several vitally important fields. To take advantage of those synergies, we must become very intentional and aggressive in our planning. If international affairs, the environment, the integration of scholarship and teaching, and interdisciplinarity are to become our hallmark areas of distinction, then we need to create the structural mechanisms for facilitating and rewarding initiative in these areas, and others besides. Some institutions with which we compare ourselves have been moving in recent years to establish Centers of Excellence, where faculty and students from different disciplines but with a common set of intellectual interests can use each other as resources and stimulate the kind of innovative approaches that sometimes occur at the intersection of different academic traditions. To the extent that we at Lewis & Clark can benefit from this model for innovation, we should consider which of those intersections offer the greatest promise and how best to develop that potential.

2. The Student Body

Given that we have three highly differentiated schools at Lewis & Clark, are there shared characteristics for the student body that we might jointly envision for our institution as a whole? The question is a complicated one and needs to be addressed for each of the individual schools within the College in terms of size, diversity, quality, and the students’ reasons for being here. At present, our enrollment stands at 3,320, with 1,950 in the College of Arts and Sciences, 630 in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling, and 740 in the Law School. Our current levels of enrollment have been driven in large measure by a sense of how many students constitute a critical mass for individual programs as they have evolved over time. Understandably, enrollments have been constrained by the available resources—human, financial and physical. At the same time, there is pressure to allow enrollments to rise, so as to generate ever increasing revenue streams for all three schools.

Beyond the issue of sheer numbers, we have in the past also been influenced by our desire to establish a mix within the student body—by geographic origin, by ethnic and social identity, by co- and extracurricular interests, and by gender. Our efforts at creating diversity have not always been so successful as we might hope. A diverse student body is one of the best ways to instill in our students a sense of the importance of being conversant with the issues of multiculturalism and an appreciation of cultural backgrounds other then their own. How can we improve our record in this regard?

On the bright side, the record of retention is improving at Lewis & Clark. Within CAS, there are today relatively more upper class students and fewer first-year students than has been the case in recent years. In the Graduate School, enrollments are rising in all programs, and the new doctoral program has introduced an entirely new category of student on campus. In legal education, recent demographic pressures have lowered the total number of law students nationwide. Bucking this trend, the Lewis & Clark Law School has nevertheless been able to sustain and even improve its record with regard to the quality of entering students. We must nevertheless be ever mindful of the external educational environment in which we operate and acknowledge that within our dynamic society there are always new populations that challenge our assumptions about the needs of our students, indeed about who our students should be.

3. The Student Life Program

The question of program mix also extends to co- and extra-curricular activities. The attractiveness of student life activities at colleges and universities, including both club activities as well as athletics, is a major factor in student recruitment and retention. At Lewis & Clark, the historic track record has been uneven in this regard, with some former students citing a lack of community or of sufficient activities in which they can become engaged as a reason for leaving the College. By the same token, faculty and staff engagement in such activities is a major factor in their success. Are our resources well deployed to make our student life activities all that they can be? Are there measures that we can take to broaden the appeal of those activities that we do have to make them more appealing to students?

This problem has been brought into focus by the recent difficulties with the football program. Although this White Paper is written prior to the publication of the report of the Football Commission, it is clear that the crisis in the football program is a clarion call for serious consideration of the role of athletics as an integral part of the life of the College. If we truly believe in the complementarity of physical well-being with mental agility, then we must take seriously the challenge of establishing for every member of the Lewis & Clark community the opportunity to engage in some form of physical activity. Further, we need to promote that participation as an essential part of life for everyone at the College—faculty, staff, and students—and in all three of our schools.

4. Garnering the Resources

As a private institution of higher learning, Lewis & Clark has always been dependent upon the generosity of others. Our track record in this regard has been a singularly positive one. In recent years, however, the competition in this country for scarce philanthropic dollars has increased. It is never wise to take for granted the support of any of our donor constituencies, and the future will in all likelihood prove even more uncertain in this regard. Compounding our difficulties, Lewis & Clark will undoubtedly require additional resources to achieve all of its goals for the near and long-term future, resources that can not be fully culled from existing sources such as tuition revenue and endowment income.

As we begin to contemplate the future, serious consideration must also be given to the need for expanding the circle of donors who traditionally have supported the College. Initiatives are already underway to increase alumni support for Lewis & Clark. In 2004-2005, our alumni participation rate fell below 20% of alumni of record. Our competition routinely receive gifts from 30% or more of their alumni. At the same time, we must expand our programs to encourage planned giving and to attract major donors to the projects that we as a community have identified as our highest priorities.

5. Measures of Success

Part of strategic thinking is strategic measuring. In the course of the coming weeks, we will be compiling a series of data to show where we stand relative to our competition and to our own history. These benchmark data will provide further context for the work of the Task Force and help frame the discussion about our future. We need to ask ourselves what benchmark targets are appropriate for us: faculty-to-student ratios for the three schools; retention and graduation rates; post-graduation placement rates; scholarly achievement; volumes in the libraries; administrative staff-per-faculty ratio; alumni involvement; costs per unit of inputs and outputs. We have begun to establish goals in some of these areas, with the establishment of peer group baseline data for budgeting in the College of Arts and Sciences. These efforts need to be expanded and incorporated permanently into the planning and practical management of the other two schools and of the administration as well.

Conclusion

In May, 2006, I hope to report to the Board of Trustees on the outcome of this year’s strategic dialog and the work of the Task Force. That is one product of this exercise. A far more important product, however, will be the engagement of broad sectors of the Lewis & Clark community in the issues that face us in our upward climb. I am convinced that we have within us immense potential that needs only to be organized and focused in order for us to achieve ever greater distinction as an institution of national prominence. Together, we can and will move Lewis & Clark into the first tier of institutions of higher learning in the United States and the world. I heartily invite you to join that effort.