In response to the problems of ineffective leadership, planning and coordination of the College over the past year, and their serious impacts on our financial condition, educational activities, and faculty, student,and staff morale, the campus core and associate faculty have prepared this plan. We have had to prepare this working document in a short period, and under very difficult circumstances, but we hope it presents a framework and an initial set of actions that can help us move more quickly to a place of new leadership and strategic planning for the College.

Introduction ............................................ 3 Goals and Actions ....................................... 4 Overview of Plan ........................................ 5 Elements of the Plan .................................... 6 Implementation .......................................... 17 Board Support ........................................... 17

Goddard College currently faces serious short and long term problems that have not gotten the attention they need because of continuing struggles with the president over issues of authority. We have operated for over a year with virtually no college-wide leadership, planning and coordination, and this has taken a serious toll on the College. We need to move beyond this impasse quickly so that we can turn our full attention to these problems, and address them strategically, decisively, and soon.

What are these problems? The most obvious problems we face include:

• shortfalls and declines in returning student and continuing education enrollment;

• weak fund raising;

• poor control of costs;

• inappropriate expenditure priorities;

• deterioration of physical facilities; and

• financial shortfalls.

All of these problems are important and need to be solved, but they are also symptoms of some deeper and more important issues that must also be addressed. These deeper concerns include the need to:

• develop clarity and consensus about the College's mission, vision, goals, and strategy;

• meet the continuing challenge to revitalize our off-campus and campus curricula and residential life experience;

• support innovation and develop new programs;

• overcome an almost total breakdown in College-wide leadership, planning and coordination; and

• move towards a more democratically managed and governed college in line with the values and mission of the College.

Although these are difficult and challenging problems, the College has amazing resources in its students, staff, faculty, administration, board, alumni/ae and supporters which, if mobilized, coordinated, and used strategically, can help Goddard realize its potential and strengthen its role as a leader in progressive education.

This is a plan to do just that. It identifies goals for the College that speak to the short and long term concerns raised

above. For each goal we describe the immediate problems that need to be addressed in moving towards that goal and identify a series of steps that we need to take. Some of these steps can be taken right away; some are longer term and more suggestive at this point, awaiting the test of a longer term planning process that should begin by September.

We ask for your support of this initiative, your comments on the elements of the plan, and your participation in its implementation.

We see this as a working document that needs to be refined and developed, and then carried out as part of a program of new leadership for the College.

This plan develops actions to achieve ten interrelated goals:

1. Develop Effective College-Wide Leadership, Planning and coordination.

2. Develop a Long Range Strategic Plan for the College

3. Build Curriculum and Community

4. Support Innovation and New Program Development

5. Increase Enrollment

6. Revive Fund Raising

7. Revise Expenditure Priorities and Control Costs

8. Improve Physical Plant

9. Strengthen College's Financial Condition

10. Become a Democratic College

For each goal area we identify actions that would move the College towards achieving that goal (proposed actions), with the complete identification and prioritizing of actions to be taken becoming part of the strategic planning process (GOAL 2).

This past year at Goddard has been a year of no long range planning, considerable conflict and contention over an endless assortment of presidential decisions, a stalemated budgeting process, no policy review or coordination by the CEC, low morale, and student and faculty votes of no confidence in the leadership of the College. If this continues, there is little hope that we will be able to solve the serious problems we face as a college. Goddard can not deal effectively with the college-wide problems it faces until it resolves its current leadership crisis and puts in place people and organizational structures that have credibility and support throughout the college community.

Without credible and trusted leadership, the rest of this plan may be impossible to carry out. How can we effectively address matters of mission, vision, strategy, curriculum, community, democratic governance if we are alienated from our formal leadership? if all parties do not feel there is enough safety for the honest communication to occur that is essential for this plan to work?

Consequently, we begin this plan with actions designed to restore effective and credible leadership to the College, and to put in place a management team, with clear and reasonable responsibilities, that can provide the planning and coordination needed to make progress on all of the goals included in this plan.

Proposed Actions:

• Board meet with our team of leaders from the faculty, staff, and administration to agree on a transitional management team and to discuss our plan for how college-wide administrative responsibilities will be shared among members of this team.

• Implement Governance Task Force recommendations for CEC's role in budgeting, long range planning, and governance as part of this reorganization.

• Plan over the summer for appropriate educational activities to develop management team effectiveness, as part of a larger development effort discussed under GOAL 10.

The College discontinued its planning process over a year ago and has spent the precious time since then struggling over issues of authority and control we thought had been settled in the Board-approved governance document.

We must immediately reinstate a long range planning process and address concerns about our mission, vision, goals, and strategy.

Our existing mission statement is inadequate as a guide for shaping college goals and strategy and needs to be rewritten as part of this planning process. As it stands now, the mission statement does not provide a broad enough umbrella to encompass the college's longstanding commitments to student-centered, self-directed learning, collaborative learning and problem solving, building democratic community within and outside the college, and acting in the world to create a more just society.

Perhaps this mission can be captured in a phrase like "Democracy Goes to College" (1940) or "Becoming Democracy's College" (mid '80s) that reflects our commitment to democracy in education, in governance, and in the larger world, and which can be used more easily than our current mission statement to guide our day to day decisions and choices about the College. Part of our planning process will be to develop a clearer and more comprehensive mission statement.

We also need to work together to build a vision of the College -- where we want to be and need to be in five years -that reflects our mission and history, but also grows out of an analysis of both the environment in which we operate and our organizational resources. This analysis should include an assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of both our environment and our organization.

Building on our mission, vision and this underlying analysis, we then need to develop a clear understanding of the critical choices/issues we need to address and the strategies we need to guide us as we move from where we are now to where we would like to be in five years. We need such a strategy to make choices about the students we wish to recruit, the curriculum and programs we wish to offer, the campus and community we wish to build, the connections to the larger world we want to create, the staff and faculty we employ, and the way we govern and manage the College.

Proposed Action:

• Approve the Governance Task Force recommendations for the CEC's role in long range planning so the CEC can establish a summer subcommittee to prepare for a long range planning process to begin in the Fall. CEC may want to engage consultants for this process.

For many years Goddard College has had a stated commitment to a "24 hour curriculum" in which all aspects of student life -- independent study, group studies, work, dormitory life, community experience -- are considered opportunities for growth and learning ...curriculum and community life become one.

This commitment, however, has not always found its way into practice. Without this more integrated way of viewing education, we lose both our distinctiveness and our effectiveness as an educational organization, and offer fragmented, isolated, or contradictory curriculum and community experiences that may, for example, lead current students to be less likely to return to continue or complete their studies at Goddard (discussed in GOAL 5).

The challenge for us is to develop a more focused, integrated, and revitalized curriculum and residential living-learning experience for campus and off-campus (limited residency) programs. This requires a holistic approach, like that sought in this plan, that links the work program (see GOAL 8), democratic governance (GOAL 10), student and academic support, and curriculum development as described in the faculty report, "Articulating our curriculum Vision."

This more integrated approach includes a holistic curriculum that integrates living and learning, uses the campus as a laboratory for more problem and question-centered learning, offers more common experiences that support community building (such as participation in governance, work programs, community service), gets students off-campus and more involved with the rest of the world, and provides opportunities to learn about larger economic, political, social and cultural systems and how they impact on community and individual lives.

Proposed Actions:

• As part of the strategic planning process, establish a special task force on Curriculum and Community, with student, faculty, staff, and administration members, to frame a more holistic approach to curriculum and residential life, and to develop an action plan to move the College more fully in this direction.

• Create and document a "philosophy of curriculum," building on the report "Articulating Our Academic vision," and develop the implications of this philosophy for the above task force.

• Experiment with dormitory themes to integrate living and learning.

• Network with others who are doing creative and alternative work in education.

• Create a continuing discussion on "Teaching and Learning at Goddard" with regular presentations by faculty of the learning goals, procedures, and successes and problems of the group studies they are leading.

The innovation and new program development process is the wellspring for the future Goddard College, creating and testing the new ideas that define the College's emerging educational philosophy while eventually generating the revenues needed to replace those of programs in decline.

There is no shortage of good ideas for new programs and initiatives at Goddard. The problem has been that, especially in the face of the ongoing crisis in budget and leadership, there is no substantive institutional recognition or financial support of the importance of developing new programs. This has meant, for instance, that:

• a proposal for 1/2 time study option for off campus students, has languished for close to three years;

• an on-line, computer-based communication system for the off-campus psychology program, designed to increase collaboration among students and reduce isolation in their work and within the psychology community, has been put on hold;

• individuals developing a new program, say for Health Arts or Progressive Business, have had to put in long hours, well beyond those for which they were compensated; and

• the admissions advertising budget for Health Arts, marketing assistance for the Goddard Business Institute, and staff support for the Institute for Teaching and Learning have been minimal.

There needs to be recognition that if we do not provide leadership and commit resources to new program development, we stand to not only lag behind educationally and financially, but also to lose our collective sense of excitement and enthusiasm.

Proposed Actions:

• Make an institutional commitment to the future of the College by agreeing that funded, systematic development of new programs should be a priority.

• Implement immediately 1/2 time option for off-campus study.

• Introduce and promote one new concentration in BA/MA per year, with adequate budgetary support.

• Inventory faculty new program ideas, interest in pursuing these ideas, and willingness to look at their feasibility.

• Obtain CEC approval to use a percentage of tuition to reimburse existing "Revolutionary Revolving Curriculum Loan Fund" for start up grants to support new initiatives.

• Develop information gathering system to identify new educational needs, programs, possibilities.

• Provide staff support for program feasibility analysis, development, and implementation.

Stable and growing enrollment in all of our programs (campus, off-campus, continuing education) is essential for the quality of educational experience of students and for the financial future of the College. Although total enrollment has been growing since 1992, the rate of growth of enrollment has been slowing each year. And the pattern of enrollment of new and returning students, and of campus, off-campus and continuing education, has been changing as well.

While in the short time we have had to prepare this plan we could not assemble and analyze complete historic enrollment data, in a 4/8/96 memo, Peter Burns, Director of Admissions, pointed out that the budget shortfall in student revenues of $651,232 in 1995-96 could be broken down into lower than projected revenues from new students ($59,539 or 9%), returning students ($340,737 or 520), and continuing education ($250,956 or 39%).

This evidence suggests that our enrollment revenue problems may stem more from program and residence conditions that reduce the rate at which current students return to continue or complete their education, than on our efforts to recruit new students (although both are obviously important). Also, although much smaller in absolute dollar amount, changes in continuing education revenues can be significant.

In a review of exit interviews with students planning not to return, the reasons for not returning included a concern about the "political environment" on campus (largely conflicts between faculty and administration), lack of the specific educational resources needed for their particular study interests, and a dormitory and campus environment not conducive to learning (e.g. lack of seriousness of some students). This suggests a close connection between building curriculum and community (GOAL 3) and strategies to increase the re-enrollment rate of returning students.

Proposed Action:

• Faculty and staff campaign to contact all current campus and off-campus students to explain new leadership and changes at College and encourage to return in Fall; similar campaign to contact students who have left to determine why (and encourage to return).

• Collect and analyze historical data on off-campus and campus new student and returning student enrollment.

• Develop marketing strategy for new student enrollment consistent with mission and overall strategy of college (GOALS 1 & 2)

• Evaluate experience with Miller & Cook approach and integrate favorable aspects with Goddard admissions methods and values. -Increase returning student enrollment through longterm improvement of curriculum and residential life (GOAL 3)

• Evaluate and implement most promising Continuing Education Task Force recommendations.

The College needs to increase its fund raising substantially in all areas, but especially in its gifts and private grants and contributions to its endowment fund. From the data available to us, the College's record over the last few years is not very impressive (see table).

Gifts and Private Grants: Annual Increases in Unrestricted Restricted*** Endowment Fund 1993* $191,480 $242,265 $50,400 1994* $172,622 $ 66,164 $81,528 1995* $144,769 $157,242 $71,835 1996 $ 84,132** not known not known

*from the 1993-95 audited financial statements.

**as of 3/14/96; 70% of fiscal year completed (from CFO report to Board).

***If we omit the Ford and Mott Foundation grants that were arranged and carried out independently of Goddard (except that Goddard handled the accounting and received loo for overhead), restricted gifts and private grants raised by Goddard come to $216,827 in 1993; $15,287 in 1994; and $41,962 in 1995.

Fund raising will undoubtedly increase if the College can clarify (and publicize) its mission and its uniqueness (GOAL 2), its educational philosophy and curriculum (GOAL 3), and its organizational changes (GOALS 1 & 10). However, these efforts need to be guided by a strategy that reflects these changes, and by leadership and organization equipped to implement this strategy effectively which involves community members who are more in touch with the College's mission, programs, and innovations.

Proposed Actions:

• Provide new leadership for the College's development efforts, establish a strategy for fund raising consistent with the College's mission, and reorganize development activities so they more effectively draw on the ideas and people must likely to generate financial support for the College.

• Find appropriate ways to build fundraising and recruitment into most peoples' work (staff and faculty) and into the work and consciousness of current students.

• May want to create a broadly representative development committee to assist in fund raising, oversee publications, help with academic grants.

Our analysis of the College's costs indicates that costs have not been controlled very well, and that the allocation of the budget across different expenditure categories is hard to justify. The table below presents the principal revenue source (student fees) and operating costs for the College, 1994 (actual) through 1997 (original budget proposal):

1994 1995 1996* 1997** Student Fees 4,207,578 4,660,114 4,767,802 4,767,802*** Expenditures: Instruction 1,563,146 1,656,211 1,541,896 1,301,647 Acad. Support 265,879 272,815 320,597 353,725 Student Services 610,677 713,897 772,331 745,607 Institutional Support 971,522 982,972 1,194,717 1,289,924 Physical Plant 389,659 410,088 495,859+ 465,543 Public Service 31,789 39,291 41,128 41,128 Total 3,832,672 4,075,274 4,366,528 4,197,574

*1996 revised budget (1994-95 are actuals).

**Original proposed budget for 1997 (may have been modified).

***Assuming no growth in student fees.

+ Inflated because contains substantial capital expenditures that should have been put in plant fund.

This table shows how total expenditures grew too rapidly in 1996 relative to student fees due to a slowdown in originally anticipated revenues and a failure to adjust costs appropriately. The anticipated deficit in 1996 relative to a surplus in 1994 ,and 1995 is further evidence of a need for better fiscal controls.

Proposed Actions:

• Put in place a budget reporting and monitoring system (monthly and year-to-date actuals vs. budgeted) for all individuals with any expenditure responsibility. And hold people accountable.

• Develop a salary structure more in line with our size and our values.

• Conduct a complete and thorough analysis of Goddard costs over time, relative to revenues, and compared to similar colleges.

• Develop an improved budgeting system (see GOAL 10) and adhere to existing financial policies and procedures.

• Move toward self-administration to cut costs (GOAL 10).

Expenditure Priorities:

What is more disconcerting from the data, however, is the substantial change in priorities reflected in the planned reduction in instructional expenditures (-17% from 1994-97) and

increase in institutional support, i.e. administrative overhead (+33% from 1994-97). Averages from 173 other private colleges in New England (in 1993, latest year available) show institutional support as 18% of these expenditures, not Goddard's 27% in 1997, and instructional costs as 49%, not Goddard's 31% in 1997. (Compared to cost percentages in other colleges, our student service costs are higher and academic support is lower, but the discrepancies are far less than for institutional support and instruction).

While Goddard is different from many other colleges, it is hard to imagine how we can justify such high and growing administrative overhead. We have too many and too high paid administrative personnel relative to our size and current financial condition.

Proposed Actions:

• Prepare a plan to substantially reduce administrative overhead and provide institutional support more efficiently (see GOAL 1).

• Implement Faculty Workload recommendations, and initiate study of the equity of different work load combinations (advising, group studies, etc.) within and between campus and off-campus programs.

• Move to strengthen our system of full and half-time faculty to provide the curriculum diversity and workload flexibility needed to meet both educational and cost-related goals.

• Review activities and costs in student service area (our costs are considerably higher on a percentage basis than average in other colleges) and academic support (costs considerably lower) to determine if these functions can be performed more efficiently and whether some realignment in their costs is needed.

• Separate out operating and capital expenditures in the physical plant area, and determine if and where savings in this activity can be made (see also GOAL 8). Include disclosure of costs/bids as part of cost savings plan.

The need for improvement in College facilities is well documented, inventories of the conditions of specific facilities have been conducted, and priorities for capital improvements developed. It is the question of how to secure a stable and adequate source of support for these improvements that is the principal obstacle to improve Goddard's physical plant.

The main sources of financial support at Goddard for facilities improvements are surpluses in the current unrestricted fund that can be transferred to the plant fund, direct gifts or grants to the plant fund for capital improvements, and a strong financial condition of the College that allows for borrowing and repayment of loans used for this purpose.

But Goddard has another source of support -- the work program -- that could be more fully connected into facilities improvement, as apparently it was years ago. Given the high cost of education, a work program that cut the costs of running and improving the college (and, consequently, cut the costs to students for going to college) while providing educational opportunities, could provide a valuable source of support for improving physical plant.

Proposed Actions:

• Reformulate the work program to address physical plant needs.

• Link the work program and facilities management and improvements within the organizational structure of the College.

• Develop long range plan that sets aside a given dollar amount each year for improvement of facilities, including dollar value of work program contribution as part of that allocation.

• Develop capital budget that identifies major projects for next 3-5 years, and develops capital campaign to finance (link to GOAL 6)

• Institute Governance Task Force recommendations about CEC role in capital budgeting.

• Evaluate feasibility of new academic program on planning, design and construction.

• Develop master plan for ecological campus and secure funding based on that idea.

All major decisions that emerge from this plan must be subjected to a test of their impacts on the College's overall financial stability. Whenever we consider a new admissions policy, a plan to revitalize residential life, a new program to introduce, an educational initiative for the board, a capital expenditure on dormitories, we need to identify an estimated impact on College revenues and expenditures, and include that information in the decision to move forward or, not.

This plan addresses several goals which have clear impacts on College revenues and costs. The focus on increasing enrollment, new program development, and reviving fund raising all have important revenue potential; the goals of cost controls, realigning expenditure priorities, and restoring physical plant all have potential impacts on costs and on savings. If carefully and effectively carried out, we anticipate that financial growth will follow from the actions we take in all of the other nine goal areas.

Proposed Actions:

• Require that all major planning, program, and project decisions identify revenue and cost implications and include that financial information in the justification of the decisions being made.

• Develop financial reporting systems for major programs and projects that allow monitoring of financial impacts, and hold program and project managers accountable for their financial performance.

• Develop and distribute widely understandable and accessible annual financial reports, with appropriate historical data and evaluation of the College's past, current and anticipated financial condition and performance.

The organization and operation of the College needs to be consistent with and support the democratic elements of the College's mission, working toward an effective system of democratic governance, management, and education. Beyond consistency with goddard's mission, we anticipate that movement towards a more participative, democratic organization will greatly enhance the organization's capacity to improve its economic as well as educational performance.

Movement in this direction is similar to what is happening in most modern organizations. Organization researchers R.L. Daft and A.Y. Lewin (in organization science 4(4), 1993, i-iv) describe emerging new organizational forms as having

flatter hierarchies, decentralized decision-making, greater capacity for tolerance for ambiguity, permeable internal and external boundaries, empowerment of employees, capacity for renewal, selforganizing units, and self-integrating coordination mechanisms. Leadership in these new organizations seems to reflect a shift from maintaining rational control to leadership without control, at least in the traditional sense.

Furthermore, Patricia McLagan and Christo Nel (The Age of Participation, 1995, pp.42-3),reviewing much of the recent literature on participation and organizational performance, write that "high performance practices are participative practices .. ..formal and informal work practices that lead to high performance are practices that provide structure and support for involvement by all employees."

Implementation of more democratic governance, management and operations at Goddard will require strengthening of the democratic culture at the College, development of important democratic skills at all levels of the organization, establishment of supportive organizational systems, and longer term changes in the college's governance structure.

Proposed Actions:

• Conduct group study, community meeting, and other activities to develop a college-wide understanding and consensus around democratic values and the rights and responsibilities of those within a democratic system.

• Institute open information, participatory budgeting, and other organizational processes and policies needed to support more decentralized, participative decision making.

• Reorganize administrative structures to support and encourage more participative leadership at the College.

• Conduct a major educational effort to help board, faculty, staff, and students gain the understanding and skills needed to effectively govern and manage democratically.

To get this process started, a subcommittee of CEC and the new leadership team will meet over the Summer to refine this plan, implement specific short term activities that need to go forward immediately, and prepare for a long range strategic planning exercise in Fall.

We request your support of this initiative, your comments on the elements of the plan, and your participation in its implementation.

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