December 16, 2004

President Wilson convened the fifth and final SPSC meeting of the Fall 2004
semester at noon. The Committee amended and then approved reports of its
November 19 and December 10 meetings and asked Professor Gardner to
distribute them to all faculty and staff members as soon as possible. The
report will also be posted on the Strategic Planning Web site for students,
alumni, and other visitors to read at:
http://www2.iwu.edu/president/Strategic/

As he had promised at the December 10 meeting, the President had prepared
drafts of messages he intended to send to the community about the strategic
planning process. A shorter message will go out before the holiday break,
announcing additional opportunities during January for faculty, staff, and
students to provide their suggestions for strategic goals. He will then
send a longer message with more details about the full planning process
shortly after the beginning of the new year. The committee complimented the
President on his work and offered a number of suggestions on both the
content of the messages and the process described therein. The President
indicated that he would revise the notes accordingly.

The President then asked members to reflect on the 20-25 pages of compiled
comments and suggestions from the more than 120 faculty, staff, and students
who had responded to the Committee's request for input on potential planning
priorities earlier in the month. There was consensus that the set of
comments was extremely helpful and insightful; the Committee is very
grateful for the time and energy represented. But it was noted as well that
there appeared to be some divergence of opinion among faculty, staff, and
student constituencies as to the relative importance of some issues. The
Committee looks forward to learning more in January about the community's
ideas for strategic goals and to exploring areas on which there are
similarities and differences among the views of the three primary on-campus
constituencies.

The President closed the meeting by thanking SPSC members for their
contributions to the planning process thus far. Everyone agreed that they
looked forward eagerly to the upcoming break--and equally eagerly to
resuming the group's work in January.

Distributed to all faculty and staff: January 7, 2005