Progress Update: Better Learning, Broader Impact – Haverford 2030

Friends:

On behalf of Implementation Committee 2030 we are pleased to share our semesterly update on our strategic plan, Better Learning, Broader Impact – Haverford 2030. We are grateful to all the faculty, students, and staff whose efforts are represented below, and to the alums and friends whose support–philanthropic and otherwise–is helping us create a stronger Haverford.

Sincerely,
Jesse Lytle and Helen White
IC2030 Co-chairs

March 2025

Overview

Implementation Committee 2030 has begun aligning Haverford 2030 priorities with funding strategies, clarifying which initiatives are currently accounted for by current or future operating funds, current or expected philanthropy, and what remains on the horizon.

Initiative Updates

1. Better Learning: The Liberal Arts for Today and Tomorrow - Lead: Linda Strong-Leek

The Strategic Curriculum and Personnel Committee (SCPC) took the lead in calling for new faculty positions in Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Additional proposals have also been submitted by academic departments and programs for other areas of the curriculum. A collaborative study of enrollment patterns involving SCPC, the Existing Curriculum Committee (ECC), the Faculty Affairs and Planning Committee (FAPC), the Associate Provosts, and the Registrar was initiated, leveraging data on enrollment patterns and faculty-student ratios to inform decisions about maintaining and enhancing the curriculum. The faculty first-year advising group has also made progress to build on foundational advising practices, including summer advising meetings and developing pre-arrival materials. This work is intended to develop a pre-major advising model that deepens student understanding of a liberal arts education.

2. Writing, Interpretation, and Creativity - Lead: Linda Strong-Leek

Efforts to enhance writing, interpretation, and creativity as a cornerstone of Haverford’s liberal arts education are underway, in collaboration with Jess Libow, Interim Director of the Writing Program, and Kristin Lindgren, Director of the Writing Center. Work has begun to examine the first-year writing experience and program structure in comparison to those from peer institutions. In addition, an ad hoc committee composed of members from SCPC, ECC, and the Office of the Provost is leading an expanded conversation on the role of First-Year Writing Seminars in preparing students for academic work at Haverford. Recognizing the importance of faculty input, this group will engage the wider faculty in examining the Writing Program’s goals, structure, and staffing, ensuring broad participation in shaping the future of first-year writing.

3. Sharing Our Scholarship and Research: Extending our Public Reach - Lead: Helen White

Efforts to amplify and support faculty scholarship continue to take shape through enhanced structures and partnerships including The Faculty Scholarship Showcase, ongoing initiatives such as the Winter Faculty Update, and expanded collaboration with College Communications to share faculty work more broadly, including through Faculty Focus stories. The most recent article in this series focused on John C. Whitehead ’43 Professor of Humanities Richard Freedman (see here).

In addition to strengthening visibility, structural investments in faculty research support are growing. A new endowment from the Estate of Burton Pike has expanded funding for faculty research, with a particular focus on the Humanities. We also continue to partner with the Libraries to advance Open Access Publishing, ensuring greater public dissemination of faculty scholarship. These efforts continue to reinforce our commitment to elevating faculty research and extending its reach within and beyond Haverford.

4. Cultivating Haverford Connections - Lead: Nikki Young

This spring, several initiatives are advancing dialogue, community building, and equity-focused learning. Sustained Dialogues will explore Antiracism in the 21st Century through biweekly cohort discussions grounded in shared materials and personal experiences. Equity and Access Workshops, including Foundations of Inclusive Excellence (FIE) and Proactive Search Strategies (PSS), will provide critical training on inclusive practices. The Dinner with 12 Strangers series will foster meaningful conversations across differences, while a Civil Rights Trip during Spring Break 2025 will take a cohort on an 8-day immersive journey along the Civil Rights Trail, engaging in reflection and dialogue.

Community-building efforts continue with Affinity Employee Resource Groups (AERGs) for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Persons with Disabilities & Neurodiversity, Working Parents, and Jewish employees, offering dedicated spaces for connection and support.

5. FORD Life: Building a Co-Curricular Learning Model for Haverford College - Lead: John McKnight

The FORD Life (formerly HaverLife) initiative is making progress in reimagining the co-curricular experience at Haverford. The planning team has developed a syllabus and a set of learning outcomes that will bring together individual campus programs and departments in a more intentional and coordinated effort to support student learning outside the classroom. This framework aims to better organize, integrate, and promote the wide range of programs and initiatives already happening on campus, ensuring greater accessibility and participation.

Grounded in educational research and praxis, FORD Life is designed to help both educators and students more clearly articulate the educational value of out-of-classroom engagement. By offering a structured approach to navigating co-curricular opportunities, the initiative encourages students to recognize that success often happens by design. The goal is to provide a roadmap that allows students to better reflect upon and articulate their personal growth and skill development, ultimately enhancing their ability to demonstrate the added value of these experiences in ways that contribute to their post-graduate success.

Next steps include refining the framework in collaboration with key campus partners and beginning initial implementation efforts.

6. One Team: Elevating Haverford College Athletics 2023-2030 - Lead: John McKnight

The new Athletics Action Plan is a comprehensive guide to how Haverford will invest in its facilities and personnel, “to be a premier NCAA DIII athletic department producing champions in academics, athletics, and ethical leadership while fostering positive and inclusive communities.” Internal program work and external fundraising efforts are both underway to help realize the Plan’s aspirations. Read the news story here for more information.

7. The Ethical Inquiry and Leadership Institute - Leads: Sorelle Friedler and Jill Stauffer

The implementation team has approved a yearly ethics theme model, where each year’s programming, courses, and events will center around a selected theme proposed by Faculty Fellows and approved by the Institute’s Steering Committee. The 2025-26 pilot theme, Heat, will explore the health and environmental impacts of a warming climate, led by Josh Moses (Environmental Studies & Anthropology) and Anna West (Health Studies). Planning is underway for courses, events, and co-curricular activities, including a visiting artist. Additionally, six new or revised ethics-related courses are expected to be added to the curriculum next year.

A staffing and governance structure is taking shape to ensure the Institute’s long-term success. In the short term, a Coordinator position will be hired by June 2025 to oversee program support, budget administration, communications, and event coordination. Longer-term plans include expanding to an Associate Director and Administrative Assistant to support programming, faculty engagement, and institutional partnerships. The Steering Committee, including faculty, staff, and Institute leadership, will guide key decisions and ensure broad faculty input. Plans for evaluation and assessment are also in development, with baseline data collection beginning in Spring 2025 to track the Institute’s curricular reach, student participation, and research impact.

8. Fords in Action: Strengthening Civic Engagement & Participatory Practice - Leads: Eric Hartman and Joshua Moses

The Fords in Action initiative is an effort to support and expand Haverford’s various modes of action-based learning in collaboration with community organizations and partners. Many Haverford departments and individuals are active in these kinds of educational opportunities, whether through an academic course as part of the formal curriculum, through a co-curricular program or center, or as an extracurricular endeavor. This working group continues to lead planning for how the College can better support current activities, enhance their educational impact, and facilitate access and connections for other initiatives whose activities may also extend into this kind of learning, such as the Kim Institute for Ethical Inquiry and Leadership (#7 above), Summer Experiences for All (#9 below), or the Arboretum and HaverFarm (#11 below). The emerging FORD Life co-curricular framework (#5 above), too, now presents a timely opportunity to locate and articulate these diverse-yet-related educational experiences intentionally within our student development model in order to make them–and their educational value–more legible to students.

9. Summer Experiences for All: Expanding Access to High-Impact Experiential Learning - Lead: John McKnight

This group is continuing to define which elements of campus internships, currently administered across multiple college units, should be centralized or remain decentralized, and what technologies will best support various organizational models. With a preliminary budget now in place, the group is continuing work to identify funding opportunities, as it also monitors uncertainties of the federal funding landscape that could bear on the availability of some summer experiences including grant-funded research.

10. Campus Renewal: Living-Learning Spaces - Lead: Nico Washington

After an extended, iterative campus process and multiple drafts, the Comprehensive Campus Plan is complete and will soon be disseminated to campus and our extended community. The Plan provides a multi-decade vision for the renewal and development of campus and its physical assets, only some of which will be addressed within the timeframe of Haverford 2030. Among those near-term priorities are a building to house the Kim Institute for Ethical Inquiry and Leadership, upgrades to older residential buildings, and investments in accessibility. The Plan’s proposal for a new residence hall to enable longer term residential renewal is under consideration in light of other funding priorities within the next capital campaign. The Plan also provides a framework for a timely, necessary, and capital-intensive overhaul of the college’s energy systems, the funding of which is still in exploratory stages.

11. Sustainable Haverford: Innovating for a Just and Livable Future - Lead: Jesse Lytle

Thanks to a generous endowment gift, the new DHJ Sustainability Fellows program is now being piloted in the President’s Office. Incumbents Anjan Kottman ‘25 and Rachel Berman ‘26 led the College’s triennial Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) report over the past year. The DHJ Fellows program will eventually migrate under the auspices of the sustainability director–a new role proposed in Haverford 2030–once that position is funded. In the meantime, the program and other climate action work continues under Jesse Lytle, in his role of chief sustainability officer. The College’s energy decarbonization roadmap–another element of Haverford 2030–has been integrated into the new Comprehensive Campus Plan. It, too, awaits funding for the engineering and design phase, which will lead to a plan for a more efficient campus energy distribution system that will enable the addition of geothermal heating and cooling.

12. Financial Aid: Access and Inclusive Excellence - Lead: Jess Lord

Recognizing financial aid as an essential tool supporting access and academic excellence, the Financial Aid group continues its work to estimate the costs of potential policy changes that could provide students more equitable access to summer opportunities and make Haverford more affordable for students and families, for example by reducing the home equity expectation in financial aid packages.

13. Haverford Forward: Investing in our People - Lead: Nikki Young

The faculty/staff Compensation Study is nearing its implementation phase, the details of which will be communicated this spring. The Comp Study has been a significant undertaking and will provide us with a comprehensive, rationalized, market-informed framework that should serve our community well for years to come. It will also enable the equitable upward adjustment of those salaries that fall below market benchmarks, over a period of time. Simultaneously this spring, through the work of the Strategic Data project, a number of staff and faculty are pursuing professional development in data leadership, a new addition to our professional development offerings this year. The Provost’s Office and Institutional Advancement continue to monitor changes in federal funding that are affecting research and scholarship opportunities.

14. Strategic Data: Impact and Effectiveness - Leads: Megan Fitch and Kevin Iglesias

The strategic data project continues to build out the cultural capacity, the skill base, and the supporting infrastructure that will create the institutional capacity for the College to ask and answer data-informed questions throughout the organization. Implementation of Edify, the College’s new data and analytics platform, is underway, with the ingestion of data systems continuing. This winter the project has organized an intensive 17-week “Strategic Data Leadership Program” with author and data guru Kevin Hanegan for a cohort of staff and faculty interested in enhancing their skills and knowledge about how to utilize data more fully and effectively within their roles at Haverford.