President Wilson convened the eighth SPSC meeting of the Spring 2005 semester at 3 p.m. Before discussing a draft goals document that had been distributed earlier in the week, the President asked if anyone would like to raise any general questions or concerns. One committee member expressed a desire for the SPSC to step back a moment to be sure that the language of the proposed goals statements was sufficiently rooted in both the tone and aspirational nature of the Vision Statement. President Wilson noted that he sees the Vision Statement as reflecting the community’s ideals and hopes for the future, while the goals statements are more pragmatic expressions of what we must do now to strengthen our core mission. The five goals, plus increasing diversity, that the SPSC has been developing since the first of the year are the first iteration of implementing the vision.

The President stated that because he feels strongly that the goals the SPSC is about to propose to the community are core purposes, and because he anticipates that they will command a substantial quantity of resources over the next few years, he believes that we should avoid making shallow promises to do things in the short run that extend beyond this core. At the same time, several issues that are important to members of the community but that are not named as separate goals can be addressed through the strategies that will eventually accompany the proposed goals.

The Committee spent the rest of the meeting discussing how to structure its message to the campus so that goal statements are clearly framed within the mission and vision; the group decided, in fact, to distribute the Mission and Vision Statements along with the goals document. The President indicated that he and Professor Gardner would revise the materials for distribution to the campus based on today’s discussion. The SPSC agreed that once all members had given their consent to the revisions, Professor Gardner would post a final set of materials on the Intranet for faculty, staff, and students to read. The community would be invited to comment at open forums or by sending an e-mail to president@iwu.edu.

Distributed to all faculty and staff: April 1, 2005