Dear Members of the CMC Community,
As we approach our 75th anniversary in 2021, we look to our guiding values, core beliefs, and mission as the inspiration and bulwark of our leadership-focused liberal arts education.
CMC’s innovative, integrated academic and student life program, institutes and centers, Athenaeum, competitive athletics—all of what we do together in our dynamic residential community—provide a powerful arena for educating our students for thoughtful and productive lives and responsible leadership in business, government, and the professions. All of this must be accomplished in today’s rapidly changing economic, political, and cultural environment.
Over the course of the year, we invite you to join a series of conversations that are designed to address our strategic challenges. In support of this strategic vision, we will seek to integrate our strategic financial model and campus master plan in a prudent and sustainable manner.
During the past several years, we have advanced many important strategic initiatives and built new centers and facilities in support of this strategic vision, including:
- The Student Imperative (financial aid and scholarships). The College met its $100 million goal within two years, and the total amount raised in gifts and long-term commitments surpassed $175 million in the fall of 2017;
- The Soll Center for Student Opportunity;
- The CARE Center;
- The Roberts Pavilion;
- Our co-curricular and student-centered integration of the entire CMC leadership experience (building on what we learned from the personal and social responsibility initiative)
- Current collaborative initiatives on the integration of interdisciplinary STEM (with Keck Science and Harvey Mudd on computer science)
Based on discussions in the past year with the Board of Trustees, the faculty, and the broader CMC community, we are now at a point to unify these strategic initiatives with our long-term financial and campus master planning. In sum, we seek now to articulate a comprehensive strategy for Claremont McKenna College, which we are calling The CMC Strategy.
Beginning this semester, we will further describe the process for framing the key questions, developing a working draft of a plan in the fall, and finalizing the strategy in the spring of 2019.
We have asked E. David Hetz ’80 P’10, Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees, Chair of the Board Affairs Committee, and co-chair of the last capital campaign, to lead a steering committee to develop The CMC Strategy. The committee will include representation from throughout the CMC community, including trustees, faculty, students, staff, alumni, and parents.
We thank you in advance for your support and contributions to this strategic planning process.
Sincerely,
David G. Mgrublian
Chair of the Board of Trustees
Hiram E. Chodosh
President of the College