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The Strategic Planning Steering Committee has launched a website and created three task forces to start to direct and focus the process, according to an email to the Brandeis community from Provost Steve Goldstein '78.

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In the email, Goldstein  thanked the over 1,000 students, staff and faculty who have participated so far in the strategic planning process and explained the progress made so far by the committee.
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Along with the website, which was launched earlier this year, the committee has also created three task forces to "address priority areas," according to Goldstein's email.
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The first task force is the Financial Planning Task Force, which will "propose an overall financial strategy to underpin and enable the strategic plan and provide the financial framework for ongoing long-range planning and decision-making at Brandeis," according to Goldstein's email. This group will be headed by Trustee Meyer Koplow '72, who is an attorney, and has previously led the board's budget and finance committee and the search for a new president.
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The second, led by Trustee Michael Sandel '75, is the head of the Benchmarks Analysis Task Force, which will analyze how certain institutions became more desirable over the last 20 years and thus are drawing more students from across the nation and the world. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass professor of Government at Harvard University.
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The final task force is the Academic Innovations Task Force, which will propose "new programmatic approaches and flexible models for delivering a Brandeis education."  This group will be led by Associate Provost for Assessment and Innovation in Student Learning and Associate Professor of Biology Dan Perlman. 
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In an interview with the Justice, Perlman said that he was excited about the opportunity to lead a task force.  He mentioned two major factors that his group would examine. 
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"One is [that] the number of traditional students who live on campus for four years is shrinking ... [the second is that] there are a lot of opportunities of all kinds including distance learning [or online learning] and experiental learning."  He continued to say that "we want to see where do we want to go in those different trends and opportunities."
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Goldstein also reported that the committee met on Mar. 23 to continue exploring key themes from the input sessions and started to "articulate a broad vision for the Strategic Plan and identify areas for additional research." This meeting followed an all-day retreat on Feb. 12 at which the committee named and addressed themes such as Social Justice, Brandeis as a Global Institution, and the Cost of Higher Education. 
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-Sam Mintz and Sara Dejene

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