Strategizing a bright future for Jewell
In the best of all possible worlds, what would the ideal small, selective private liberal arts college of the future look like?
That’s the question that William Jewell College faculty, staff and administrators are grappling with. The stakes are high, with the very future of the college linked to the successful outcome of the planning process.
What is Phi Beta Kappa?
The Phi Beta Kappa Society is an academic honor society with the mission of “fostering and recognizing excellence” in undergraduate liberal arts and sciences. Founded at the College of William and Mary on December 5, 1776, it is the oldest such society in the United States. Membership is granted to approximately 1% of college graduates, and today there are 270 chapters and over half a million living members. Since election to the Society occurs on a school-by-school basis, membership standards are not uniform; nevertheless, no member school may induct more than 10% of its graduating class (although most chapters invite a significantly smaller percentage to membership). As such, Phi Beta Kappa is generally considered to be the most selective and prestigious of all college honor societies and election to membership one of the highest honors available to undergraduate collegians.
How can William Jewell become a Phi Beta Kappa institution?
The Phi Beta Kappa members of the faculty at a college or university seeking a chapter organize informally and choose a representative to conduct correspondence with the Society. Since charters are granted to the Phi Beta Kappa members on the faculty rather than to an institution, it is important that there be an adequate and stable nucleus for organizing a new chapter and efficiently conducting its activities. For that reason, the Phi Beta Kappa group should be constituted of 10 percent of the full-time arts and sciences teaching faculty, but in no instance fewer than 10 full-time faculty members. The application process is demanding and time-consuming, and there is no assurance of success. But undertaking the process is an important benchmark for superior liberal arts colleges.
Our Promise
William Jewell College is a campus of achievement that promises to offer students an outstanding liberal arts education with a focus on cultivating leadership, service and spiritual growth within a community inspired by rigorous intellectual challenges and Christian ideals.
Our Values
William Jewell College values the individual talents of our students, faculty, staff and alumni and the importance of developing, using and enhancing these gifts for the betterment of the individual, the institution and the world.
- We value our students’ experiences (academic and co-curricular) and the necessity for students to participate, contribute and involve themselves in the educational process.
- We value faculty members who are models of intellectual and spiritual growth and who lead students in their educational journey.
- We value our employees and are committed to providing an outstanding work experience.
- We value the promise of community to shape us, enriched by our similarities and differences.
- We value engaging the world.
- We value a comprehensive living/learning experience for students.
- We value our educational, cultural and economic connections to Kansas City.
We value using our resources (human, physical, environmental and fiscal) responsibly.
Our Vision
William Jewell College will be a nationally recognized liberal arts college that encourages intellectual and spiritual growth, leadership and service. We will empower and challenge individuals and communities to enrich their lives and society by
- raising and engaging significant questions in pursuit of knowledge and wisdom;
- providing educational experiences that support career development in the context of a liberal arts environment;
- creating academic experiences that cultivate talent development and inspire creativity;
- excelling at the use of effective and diverse methodologies and technologies for teaching and learning;
- serving others to create a more compassionate and just world;
- grappling with the meaning and implications of both Christian faith and other perspectives through disciplined and intimate conversations;
- celebrating the fact that the human community is diverse while respecting and accepting differences; and
- fostering models of responsible community living for our students.
Our Mission
The mission of William Jewell is:
- To provide students a liberal arts education of superior quality.
- To serve communities beyond the campus educationally, culturally, and socially.
- To be an institution loyal to the ideals of Christ, demonstrating a Christian philosophy for the whole of life, and expressing the Missouri Baptist heritage which is the foundation of the college.
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“We want to have clarity about our future directions, both in terms of where we are headed and who is responsible for the activities that will get us there,” said President David Sallee, who last month presented the strategic planning document to trustees and received the board’s approval to proceed.
To facilitate the process, Dr. Anne Dema, professor of chemistry and associate dean for general education, has been appointed to the position of Special Assistant to the President for Planning. Working closely with faculty committees and other key constituents, Dr. Dema is helping to guide Jewell through the step-by-step planning process aimed at charting the future course of the college.
“When Dr. Sallee came to Jewell in 2000, he presented the college with a plan called Jewell 2005,” Dr. Dema said. “In that document he identified some short-term issues and provided a beginning point for his administration.”
Bringing clarity and shape to the vision
Building on that foundation, the Administrative Council produced a new document entitled “Strategic Directions” in the spring of 2004.
“I think of this document as a ‘second phase’ of the Jewell 2005 plan,” Dr. Dema said. “It began to shape with more clarity the direction of the college. In this paper, we affirmed our current situation and provided a vision of the future that included identifying key capabilities that we need to accomplish to move toward becoming a highly selective liberal arts college.”
One of the important interim planning steps was to help the college’s constituents visualize the direction in which the institution was moving.
“We needed to clarify the point we were moving toward along this directional path and the boundaries that would guide or shape our forward progress,” Dr. Dema said. “We saw the Strategic Directions document as saying ‘We are moving in this direction.’ But we also needed to begin working on painting a visual picture of a point in this future direction so that our various constituencies could ‘see’ the place we were heading. We needed also to identify the boundaries–like banks of the river–that would be important to keeping us moving in the right direction.”
Promise, values and vision
The initial step in this process of defining the institution’s destination was the creation of the promise, values and vision statements (see sidebar on page 7), which were introduced to the campus community in the spring of 2005 and have since been disseminated to a wider audience.
A “snapshot” of the institution’s current position reveals a number of positives: “The student and faculty profile of the college is outstanding,” Dr. Sallee said. “Enrollment is solid, the quality of students is terrific, and the quality and commitment of the faculty is probably the best ever. What we need to do is work on maintaining, enhancing and communicating these strengths to our various constituent groups.”
The strategic planning document has identified the following as three key overarching goals to be accomplished within the next 10 years:
Transform William Jewell into a highly selective liberal arts college;
Provide the highest quality student experience; and
Improve the financial strength of the institution.
“To accomplish these overall goals, we identified outcomes or institutional changes in behavior, function and operations that we needed to see that would indicate we are reaching the intended changes,” Dr. Dema said. “We are using current systems, including the organizational and committee structure, to integrate the strategic work into our normal work flow so that we are focused and intentional in our planning. We do not want strategic planning to be an activity that runs parallel to the existing work of the college. It needs to be the way we work—integral to our success.”
Identifying key capabilities
The Directions document also identified some of the key capabilities that would be necessary in order to achieve the institution’s vision:
• Teaching at the highest level. Such teaching involves engaging students in active learning and challenging students to develop intellectual skills on a high level based on each faculty member’s own vital scholarly life.
• Recruiting the best students in the five-state region.
• Building the William Jewell brand through effective and consistent communication of our distinctive attributes and values.
• Raising funds to support annual operations, capital needs and endowment growth.
“We believe that Jewell should be a Phi Beta Kappa institution,” Dr. Sallee said (see sidebar on page 7). “We also think that membership in the National Collegiate Athletics Association would be a positive factor for our institution and for our student-athletes. And of course we must have the resources necessary to achieve these goals. That means raising at least $100 million over the next 7 to 10 years.”
‘Are we there yet?’
With a plan for the future in place, what benchmarks will be used to chart the institution’s progress?
“We identified some key metrics that we believed would be critical indicators of success,” Dr. Dema said. These include increasing the average ACT of entering students; recruiting a first-year class of at least 340 students; maintaining a high rate of acceptance into graduate and professional schools and a high rate of job placement; and increasing the institution’s endowment from its current level of approximately $70 million to $120 million by 2014.
“Ideally we will have strengthened William Jewell College in many ways, including our financial position, the educational experience and the way our constituencies perceive the college,” Dr. Dema said.
The goal of enhancing the William Jewell experience for a new generation of students is an important one.
“Residential liberal arts colleges like William Jewell, with the kind of community of learning and living they create, offer one of the most transforming environments in which to pursue a higher education,” Dr. Sallee said. “The purpose of a liberal arts education is to develop the personal and intellectual capacities of our students by expanding their capacity to think clearly and critically, to judge wisely, to act humanely, responsibly and collaboratively, and to communicate effectively. The kind of liberal arts experience we are pursuing offers the most effective preparation in an ever-changing world for a lifetime of meaningful and productive work, commitment to civic and community leadership, and spiritual growth and happiness.”
What will the William Jewell College of the future look like?
“In 15 years, we hope to be a Phi Beta Kappa college,” Dr. Sallee said. “We plan to have a better qualified student body and a constantly improving faculty. The process is long and arduous, and the outcome is not assured. But the potential for a positive outcome makes the effort worthwhile.
“We will be the best possible extension of the Jewell that we all know and love.”
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