Strategic plan lays out ambitious agenda

Hundreds of alumni, students, faculty, staff and trustees worked throughout the fall to produce The Richmond Promise, a bold plan for the University.

Five working groups, totaling more than 75 people, pored over documents, talked with colleagues, studied Web pages, analyzed numbers, examined other schools and produced multiple drafts of plans for each component of the final document. At more than 20 open forums, everyone associated with the University was invited to weigh in on the broad outlines and the detailed provisions of each of the five components of the plan. A Web site also gave people the opportunity to comment in detail, anonymously if they wished, on each draft.

The resulting document has been endorsed by representatives of the faculty, the staff and the University of Richmond Alumni Association. The Board of Trustees approved it unanimously. Students have been active participants at every step, and both the Westhampton College Government Association and the Richmond College Student Government Association have discussed the plan’s implications for student life.

The principles that the University community has outlined establish how Richmond will pursue its mission for the next five years. Goals provide direction, and action steps ensure effective means of achieving those goals.

The basic principles of The Richmond Promise grew out of conversations President Edward Ayers had with all of the University’s constituencies last year, when he asked them what they wanted Richmond to be known for as it moves forward. Wide agreement emerged about what the University should commit itself to accomplish.

The resulting plan pledges that the University will dedicate itself to five major goals. The larger purpose is to operate as a model institution of higher education, sustaining a superb faculty and staff and administering the institution with the highest standards of innovation and professionalism.

The University promises to offer a learning environment unlike any other in higher education, offering students an extraordinary combination of traditional strengths in the liberal arts plus schools of law, business, leadership studies and continuing studies.

Richmond commits itself to offer a distinctly integrated student experience, coordinating a rich and innovative life for students inside and outside the classroom, with excellent programs as varied as international studies, arts and athletics.

The University community will be defined by a spirit of opportunity and welcome to excellent students, faculty, and staff of all means and backgrounds, sustained through a comprehensive program of financial aid, a dedication to overarching fairness, and an authentic culture of inclusivity that seeks and prizes diversity of experience, belief and thought.

The next five years will see the University engaged as a meaningful part of the Richmond community, of the nation and of the world, drawing on our long commitment and well-established foundations for such work.

This new strategic plan, in short, aims to fulfill the mission established by the Board of Trustees: to “sustain a collaborative learning and research community that supports the personal development of its members and the creation of new knowledge. A Richmond education prepares students to live lives of purpose, thoughtful inquiry, and responsible leadership in a global and pluralistic society.”

The Richmond Promise will guide everything the University strives to accomplish over the coming years. The University community has quickly and unanimously come together around its defining purposes.

The entire strategic plan—complete with all the action steps necessary to achieve the University’s goals—is available at strategicplan.richmond.edu.

Here are the highlights:

Integrated academics

The University will redesign the curriculum to make accessible the full range of curricular offerings across the schools, including a guarantee that all undergraduate students may take at least one upper-division course in two schools outside the school of their major.

To ensure implementation of those action steps, the University will establish a representative ad hoc faculty task force to propose a revised undergraduate first-year experience, a general education framework, and upper-division curricular opportunities consistent with an integrated academic enterprise.

A faculty development initiative will offer increased support for interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship, making Richmond the destination of choice for the highest quality faculty.

Inclusive diversity

The Richmond Promise seeks to ensure an inclusive campus environment that welcomes people from diverse backgrounds, encourages the exchange of ideas from various perspectives, promotes open social and academic interaction, promises full access to facilities and programs, and educates against intolerance and exclusion.

The University will recruit, retain and graduate substantially more students from underrepresented minorities to strengthen the learning environment and expand Richmond’s reach. The University also will recruit and retain faculty, staff and senior managers from underrepresented minorities to attain the critical mass needed for a diverse community.

Richmond will be strengthened intellectually and socially by the range of knowledge, opinion, belief and political perspective and background of its members, whether of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, age, religious, economic or geographic origin. Students will therefore be better prepared to contribute to a diverse and global society.

Accessibility and affordability

The University will be accessible and affordable to students who can most benefit from, and contribute to, the educational environment.

Richmond will invest in making the University more affordable for low-income and modest-income students and in making its pricing policies and costs to families transparent and understandable, so as to increase the number of students from families in those categories.

Community engagement

The University will be intentionally engaged with the city of Richmond and the wider region. Community engagement will be both a method to shape students within a civic-minded campus culture and a means to contribute the intellectual capital and skills of faculty, staff, students and alumni to the identified needs of the larger community. In turn, the University will be enhanced by greater connections to the city and region.

Richmond has a long and proud history of community engagement, much of it at the grass-roots level, that has had a transformative impact both on our students and on the community at large. Yet significant opportunities exist for the University to increase that impact by being more focused, more strategic and more coordinated in its community engagement efforts. The goals and action steps outlined in the plan are intended to increase integration, intentionality and impact.

The Richmond Promise sets three goals to improve the University’s civic engagement efforts: expanding the organizational culture of community engagement, focusing resources on limited numbers of community needs, and centralizing leadership and support for community engagement.

Distinctive experience

The University is known for its commitment to a personal, well-rounded student experience. Its optimal size and residential nature provide the foundation for further linking academic endeavors with other student activities.

The strategic plan outlines three goals to enhance the overall student experience. The first is to further integrate academics with co-curricular programs. The second goal is to strengthen the University’s sense of community by promoting student pride and school spirit. The third goal is to better prepare students to become successful and active alumni with lifelong connections to the University.

The Richmond Promise builds upon the work of the past century, when the University of Richmond took shape around Westhampton Lake. The plan will culminate in 2014, the centennial of the University’s establishment on its current campus. Over that century, generations have worked to create an ideal educational community. Now it is the current generation’s opportunity to fulfill the promise of all that the University can be.

For more information about The Richmond Promise, visit strategicplan.richmond.edu.