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BY BEN BARNHART
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In June 2000, the College Street Journal talked with President Joanne Creighton about The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003. The halfway mark of the Plan coincides with Creighton's fourth year as the College's president, and the goals, accomplishments, and very existence of the Plan have defined her presidency.
You had only been on the job for about eight weeks when you launched the process that resulted in the creation of the Plan. Why did you decide to undertake this ambitious project just as you were getting your feet wet, so to speak?
As a veteran of two previous strategic planning processes (at Wesleyan University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro), I knew that I could lead such an effort and was confident that it would focus and energize the institution. A consultant to the College said that at Mount Holyoke "the whole is less than the sum of the parts." That statement was a challenge for me; I have always been interested in finding connection and unity among seemingly disparate elements.
Engaging the MHC community in an inductive and collaborative process of self-reflection and assessment was a wonderful and affirming experience for all of us. What became evident was how much love and allegiance this College inspires and how deep the consensus is about its values and purposes. There was so much implicit agreement that we could (with considerable effort) articulate the mission in a single sentence and use that mission to put forward a set of goals for the future. In coming together to clarify what MHC was, where it wanted to go, and how it would get there, we experienced a sense of collective energy and confidence. This feeling has grown as the Plan has been successfully implemented. Without a doubt, now the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.
You enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a professor of English, literary scholar, and administrator before coming to Mount Holyoke. How did your previous experience and skills prepare you for overseeing the development and implementation of a plan of this magnitude?
An English major (or any other liberal arts major) prepares you for anything! I never wanted to do anything but read, teach, and write about novels, and I was dragged reluctantly into my first administrative post. At the behest of a persistent dean, I agreed to oversee the humanities departments at Wayne State University. Before long, I envisioned a way to bring them together in common cause for mutual gain, was awarded a large National Endowment for the Humanities grant to create that collaboration, and learned that I was good at shepherding such efforts. It took me some time to accept that administrative work was as "respectable" as academic work; I finally realized that as an administrator, I was essentially a public reader of an institution, employing the same skills that I use as a reader of novels. You ask: What are the central ideas, themes, characters, and conflicts? How do the parts fit together in a whole? What are the traditions, larger forces, and contexts? When reading a novel or an institution, you attempt "to see it steadily and to see it whole" in all of its complexity, to explore incipient ideas and potentialities, and to test out through dialogue with others interpretations or plans that would elucidate meanings and purposes.
So, you might say that everything I have done in my career, including all the novels I've read and pondered, contributed to my ability to undertake this assignment. I am proud of the now-proven credibility and resonance of our reading of the College in The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003.
What is at the heart of the Plan and its implementation?
The "Educational Principles and Challenges" section of the Plan focuses on the Plan's roots. It outlines the educational priorities that form the foundation of the Plan. The College's commitment to academic excellence, scholarship and teaching, the academic program, diversity, women's education, and engagement with the world form the basis of the initiatives outlined in the four succeeding sections. In terms of implementation, I feel that the goals of the Plan cannot be met without the support of the entire MHC community. The faculty is playing a particularly important role. These scholar-teachers are the heart and soul of the institution and are at the core of what makes MHC an outstanding liberal arts college and a vibrant educational community. I admire their energy, intellectual curiosity, pedagogical creativity, and commitment to going on all barrels, as scholars, as artists, as teachers, as citizens and leaders of the College and of the community.
What do you view as the most successful elements of the Plan?
I am pleased with the way that the Plan has taken hold and become part of the consciousness of all constituencies of the College; it's "our" Plan. It has engendered a climate of creative engagement and institutional self-confidence. I believe that in the planning process we rediscovered and tapped into the essential Mount Holyoke and are now propelled by the powerful ideas and idealism that have been here from the beginning.
Especially noteworthy is our success in admission, where we have met our application goals three years early. This is particularly gratifying, since we identified this area as our number one strategic priority. Our growing financial muscle makes possible other ambitious goals. Launching initiatives such as the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Center for Environmental Literacy and embarking on construction projects is exciting and gives tangible form to our resurgence as one of the best colleges in the land.
How will you build on the momentum that has been established?
In addition to completing the implementation of the goals of the Plan over the next three years, I am thinking about the next plan. This academic year will be a time for germinating ideas and stimulating discussion among our constituencies about the MHC of the future. The following academic year, we will begin to draw up the new plan. It will be different from The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003 because we will be so much stronger. We can be bolder. If the first was the shoring-up plan, the next will be the soaring plan. We will turn outward, focusing on the College's relationship to the larger world. Because the world is changing rapidly, especially through globalization and technology, we need to think carefully about how to position our students and the College for success in this context. Because so much is to be gained by pooling our strength, the next plan will foster continuing integration across all sectors of the College and among all constituencies. Blessed with a talented and loyal community of students, faculty, staff, alumnae, and trustees, MHC in the years ahead will attain even more impressive levels of academic excellence and purposeful engagement in the world.
