Last week Provost Steve Goldstein '78 released the Strategic Planning Steering Committee's preliminary five-year framework of the strategic plan in an email to the Brandeis community. According to Mr. Goldstein, the framework is going to set the University's 10-to-20 year trajectory to help the administration make more informed decisions about how to best utilize new investments and resources. Given that this framework is the only opportunity for the community to give feedback before the draft of the plan is released, we hope the committee will use the responses to address several problematic areas not clearly communicated in the framework, such as managing our image as an evolving research university and relationship with our Jewish identity.

The 14-page framework is divided into five categories, including continuing the University's commitment to social justice, supporting new academic initiatives and sustaining existing ones and creating an interconnected global community, among other objectives.

As students we would have liked to have seen a section outlining the proposed goals for student life on campus. While the framework does mention that the committee seeks to "[match] campus capacity to enrollment and [raise] the quality and accessibility of residential" facilities, students' enjoyment of campus life should have been given greater attention in the framework. In order to maintain an involved and engaged network of alumni, the administration must dedicate its attention to sustaining student satisfaction.  

Moreover, the framework also omits any significant mention of the University's complex relationship with our Jewish roots. While one of the initial goals on the first page of the framework says, "Brandeis will honor its Jewish roots," this idea is absent from the five core categories the University will be focusing on. While discussing the goals for empowering academic programs, the framework could have mentioned its commitment to maintaining and supporting Jewish programs like the Near Eastern Jewish Studies department.  

Likewise, in these initial goals the framework refers to Brandeis as a "research university with a liberal arts focus." While the framework puts an emphasis on research, we feel our University serves an equal and dual purpose as both a liberal arts college and a research university. Although our image as a research university has attracted a new brand of students and donors, the eventual strategic plan must find a balance between these two identities. If the administration hopes to promote greater interconnectivity with alumni and cultivate a network of donors, it is vital to nurture the unique Brandeis model, which focuses equally on the humanities, social sciences, arts and the life sciences.

Despite these omissions, we support the proposed creation of five new interdisciplinary programs. The engineering program as well as the biomedicine and global health program will help maintain Brandeis' position as a top-tier research university, while the integrated arts program supports our identity as a small liberal arts school with a focus on social justice. We appreciate that these programs will help realize the University's need to constantly differentiate itself from other similar colleges by actively helping students emerge as leaders in these competitive fields. They will allow students to evolve past our current academic structures while still maintaining the community's core values.

As the steering committee moves forward to create the draft of this plan, we hope they do not lose sight of the qualities and values that distinguish the University. The Brandeis model the framework wants to maintain inherently relies on integrating our new research-orientated image into our liberal arts history. This model depends on the preservation of our Jewish roots and an administration that values student satisfaction.