Grinnell College’s Board of Trustees has officially endorsed the institution’s newest strategic plan, “Knowledge into Action,” an initiative spearheaded by President Anne Harris and designed to guide the institution through the next seven years.
Harris, who took office during one of the College’s most tumultuous periods, in July 2020, was tasked, as all new presidents are, with leading the strategic plan in collaboration with various campus departments. She decided to center her plan on enhancing College constituents’ experiences by leveraging and strengthening the institution’s “legacy of moving knowledge into action.”
As Harris’ tenure continues to unfold against a backdrop of notable events, the College community is set to see the outcomes of her strategic plan, designed to fulfill the immediate and long-term objectives of the $2.5 billion liberal arts institution.
“This is the most sincere plan in all the land, and I use the word sincerity because every single one of these words is a distillation of dozens and dozens of voices. It took a very long time,” Harris told the S&B.
“Knowledge into Action” centers around four core pillars identified across three years of discussions, each complete with its own objectives, action items and measures of success. These include Grinnell serving as a “Catalyst for Educational Excellence,” fostering “Belonging and Connection,” embracing “Collective Equity” and valuing its constituents’ “Shared Goals and Common Ground.”
“We started by hosting town halls and gathering what we know about our community and their experiences, especially folks who have been less empowered historically within the context of higher education, to share their experiences and help the institution think about its mission,” said Caleb Elfenbein, professor of history and religious studies, a member of the plan’s core strategic planning team and associate dean for faculty development and diversity, equity and inclusion at the College.
The College’s previous plan, coined by former President Raynard Kington, focused on increasing brand strength to increase tuition revenue. “That plan, although still in the works, succeeded in stratospherically increasing tuition revenue, but so too has our operating budget, so there’s no net gain there,” said Harris.
The College’s adherence to a need-blind admissions policy, a no-loan policy, and the provision of $74 million in financial aid — one of the highest figures among its 30 peer institutions — has led to a growing dependence on its $2.5 billion endowment to meet operational budget needs.
Despite these efforts, Grinnell’s reliance on philanthropy — a crucial third pillar — significantly lags behind that of its peer institutions, a condition Harris views as a precarious and unsustainable trend.
“We need to inspire the philanthropy of our alumni to step up and help us sustain things for decades to come, for future generations of students,” said Michael Kahn `74, chair of the College’s board of trustees. “Though we have a big endowment, we’ve pushed it very far because of our value of creating access and having a lot of students who might not otherwise be able to afford a Grinnell education.”
“We have to break our myth that the endowment will take care of everything,” Harris said. “We’ve made the endowment into this paternalistic figure that’s going to protect us and make us impregnable. We’re not impregnable, no institution is.”
The plan goes beyond addressing the financial conundrum faced by the College, however, and touches upon several of the issues highlighted by attendees in the workshops and inspired by events unfolding across Harris’ tenure.
In confronting the challenges of cybersecurity, the College faced a sobering moment following a compromise of students’ payroll information. Earlier this month, College students, staff and faculty were bombarded with over 3000 phishing emails sent from students’ College email accounts with a form requesting receivers to deluge their current and past passwords.
“We will connect with students to study the coordination between the academic mission and data security because, right now, they’re more in conflict than they are in coordination,” said Harris, who has created a task force to study cyber security on campus. “Before we seek new leadership, I really want to have clarity on what the CIO’s role is, especially on the coordination of the new mission.”
Safety on campus is a central component of the new plan. During Harris’ tenure, Grinnell was thrust into the spotlight in the fall 2022 semester as alarming incidents of vandalism, racism and misinformation came to a head and arose almost simultaneously. As the College reassesses student safety and installs additional outdoor cameras, its new strategic plan aims to collect and analyze survey data on the “Sense of Safety on Campus” quotient to measure the success of these efforts.
Athletic participation and spectatorship were also scrutinized in the build up to the plan as the College sought to understand and remedy the low turnout at events. “Athletics showed up big time for these open sessions, and really claimed their voice in this process,” said Harris. “Spectatorship is a habit of mind of showing up for each other. We need to make time for what replenishes us, and athletics to me is one of those things.”
Monica Chavez-Silva — a member of the plan’s core strategic planning team and vice president of community engagement and strategic planning at the College — said in an email to the S&B that she hopes further engagement with the broader local community could help advance the strategic plan’s goals, including increased spectatorship.
“There is great opportunity for the College to work together with our community partners on ways to ensure that everyone feels welcome and has the opportunity to connect in the ways that make most sense for them as individuals,” she said.
Alongside increasing athletic participation, the “Belonging and Connection” portion of the plan also encompasses objectives such as strengthening recruitment and retention strategies, as well as closing demographic gaps.
“When we look over time, there are clear demographic trends,” said Elfenbein.
The effort aligns with the broader context marked by the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling, which ended race-conscious admission programs in colleges and universities. Concurrently, the College has maintained a test-optional policy introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harris characterizes this policy, slated for review in Fall 2026, as “100% a recruitment policy,” focusing on enhancing retention and reducing demographic disparities.
“The challenge is … ‘How do you maintain the diversity of the student body in a way that’s sustainable, and guarantees intergenerational equity to ensure that future generations of Grinnell students have no less than the present generation?’,” said Kahn.
Harris’ tenure also marked a notable shift in the elite College’s approach to handling its student union. The change is distinct from the previous administration’s stance, which led a legal battle against the union in 2018. The conflict began when the school’s board of trustees ordered former President Kington to cease negotiations and later, in February 2020, informed students that they would not support an expansion of the union. However, following a four-year effort and Harris’ ascension to president, students overwhelmingly voted in favor of the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers proposal. This proposal extended union representation to include not only dining workers, but all student workers on campus. As a result, collective bargaining commenced between the College and the nation’s first wall-to-wall undergraduate student union.
“I’m grateful for many reasons to the Union,” said Harris. “It really put the conversation of student employment in the forefront.”
Prior to the fall 2023 semester, the College would also independently introduce a significant wage increase to $13 an hour, amid ongoing arbitration between the union, College and National Labor Relations Board.
The College’s collective bargaining contract had expired on June 30. The student union had previously proposed a $20 base wage.
Other notable goals in the strategic plan include introducing a one-year post-baccalaureate program at the College’s 365-acre Conrad Environmental Research Area (CERA), launching a scholar-in-residence program in the College’s new $80 million off-campus student residence hall and expanding the over 60-year-old Burling Library.
“Burling needs some love,” said Harris, recalling her time researching on the fourth floor of the building for her inaugural address. “It’s dangerous up there,” she said humorously, “you’d find me years later.”
It was where Harris crafted one of her self-proclaimed favorite lines for that address, now prominently featured in large letters on the last page of the plan.
The line reads as follows, “The futures we dream all shape those of our peers, our colleagues, our friends, our visitors, and our many interlocutors. We are, like to a democracy, simultaneously inhabitants and stewards of this College: as we live and work here, we shape the shared experiences and thus the future of Grinnell College and the society it shapes.”
Update 11/30/23 8:11 PM –This article has been updated to remove a statement that may have inferred an incorrect chain of events following the November compromise of student payroll information.
