Faculty Discuss Long-Term Goals in Strategic Planning
Over the past two years, the Strategic Planning Committee has focused on three main aspects of Academy life to improve in the coming years: the overall health and wellness of the community, the examination of Exeter’s curriculum and the improvement of the financial aid system and Exeter’s accessibility.
The Strategic Planning Committee, composed of all faculty, staff and trustees, met five times over the course of this school year, aiming to address key issues that affect the Exeter community. They sought to decide upon clear, encompassing solutions to these issues, and they hope to implement these ideas in a concrete plan within the next few years.
The Steering Committee, oversaw the strategic planning meetings and ensured that it was on track to meet their scheduled deadline at the end of this year. Each working group within the Strategic Planning Committee, as well as the Steering Committee itself, was chaired by both a faculty and a staff member to ensure a full representation of voices. “Anything that we do is going to have an effect on everyone on campus, and we want to make sure that everyone has a lot of input,” Principal Lisa MacFarlane said. “We are looking forward to working more with students next fall and also with our alumni and families.”
“We have undertaken such initiatives before, but this strategic planning seems more promising.”
Music instructor Jon Sakata, who served on the planning committee this year, emphasized the importance of adequate community representation. “How we get along and go along in all stations of living, working, learning [and] playing together as a community involves a participatory ecology that truly includes all,” he said. “That perhaps requires rethinking/reimagining what institutional organization, curriculum, knowledge, sociality and Harkness are and can be.”
MacFarlane explained that one of the biggest challenges the Strategic Planning Committee faced was sorting through the myriad of good ideas that were raised during meetings and focusing in on a few key points. In an effort to narrow down their finer points, the committee tried to combine their many small ideas into a few big ones. “The challenge for strategic planning this year has been to preserve what is best about the Exeter of today and to imagine what might be the best possible Exeter of the future,” MacFarlane said. “We’ve been looking for big ideas that, if we did them really really well, would address what we would like to change, and protect what we most value.”
Academic support counselor Pamela Parris, who was a part of the Strategic Planning Committee, noted that as the committee has honed these ideas, the trajectory of the committee has diverged in new and exciting ways from its original path. “The arc of it has changed,” she said, “as it should, over the course of the year, narrowing down the topics as we chose the ones most crucial.”
MacFarlane added that the committee strived to plan in a realistic way, as well as an inspired one, and commended the community for their pursuit of this goal. “We are looking for an idea that has the right altitude, if you will, the right breadth, that is visionary, and looks at the way Exeter might be in 10 or 15 years, but [that] is doable, given where we are now,” she said. “Trying to figure out what that space is amongst all of those things, has been the work of the entire community.”
It was with these goals in mind that the Strategic Planning Committee came to realize its three main focuses for the next several years. MacFarlane explained the reasoning behind the committee’s first tenet: the overall health and wellness of the Exeter community. “I think it’s really clear to everyone on campus that a big focus for strategic planning has to be the overall health and wellness of our community,” MacFarlane said. She went on to explain the smaller facets of Exeter life that this umbrella term includes. “[Health and wellness] has to encompass pace of life and stress and the ways in which we make time for play,” she said, “and the ways in which we honor and respect each other and treat each other with dignity and kindness.”
MacFarlane- added that one of the biggest tasks that strategic planning entails is how to address these aspects of health and wellness in terms of practical constraints, emphasizing the need to understand how lower stress and better health for students would manifest in terms of residential programming and schedule.
In terms of the pedagogy of the school, MacFarlane explained that Exeter was up to date for a curriculum review. The committee discussed the future of the Exeter curriculum and potential changes to it, and looked at how the curriculum moves developmentally throughout a student’s time at the Academy. For example, they looked at ways to make senior year more of a transition year, or rather, a launchpad to college. “It seems inevitable to me that any strategic plan will be looking at what an Exeter curriculum of the future looks like,” she said.
The committee’s final focus addressed the accessibility of Exeter for a diverse array of students. “It will be important to think hard about tuition and financial aid, and how we ensure that the Exeter of tomorrow remains accessible, affordable, broad in its reach [and as] extensive in its search for really wonderful students as it always has been,” MacFarlane said.
Parris said that the most recent round of meetings feels more productive than past ones. “We have undertaken such initiatives before,” she said, “but this strategic planning seems more promising.”
A contributing factor to this, she explained, was the sheer amount of time dedicated to the planning. “I don’t recall our ever before carving out this much time for it,” Parris said. “The time has allowed us a serious focus on the process.”Parris commended the culture of the meetings as well, noting a sense of respect and acceptance in the room as faculty and staff worked together to reach compromises. “The facilitators have made us feel our opinions are wanted and valued,” she said. “We’ll never completely agree on changes that everyone will love, but it’s still an exciting prospect.”
From much of the faculty’s perspective, the meetings achieved tangible progress and bore exciting ideas for Exeter’s future. President of the Trustees Eunice Panetta expressed appreciation for MacFarlane’s work with the Strategic Planning Committee. “The strategic planning process she is leading has generated a lot of great ideas and excitement on campus and with the trustees,” she said. “The plan that results will almost certainly bring significant changes and new directions.”
Dean of Faculty Ronald Kim, formerly the assistant principal, also lauded MacFarlane’s leadership over this year and expressed excitement at the plans and ideas for the future that the meetings yielded. “She has guided a robust and thoughtful strategic planning process that has been very inclusive and exciting,” Kim said. “We are all looking forward to continuing with that process and helping implement the goals that come from it.”