Strategic plan leads Luther to 2011

Luther’s sesquicentennial strategic plan, “Transformed by the Journey,” heralds the college’s 2011 sesquicentennial. Implemented in 2008, the plan focuses on bringing people together to work through local and global issues, including sustainability and connecting faith and learning.

Although Luther’s former plan, “Shaping a Distinctive Faith and Learning Community,” focused more on changing and remodeling the campus physically and programatically, this new plan stresses the importance of establishing a community through three strategic imperatives.

The definitive strategy connects sustainability, stewardship and global citizenship. This aspect responds to an ever-changing world by creating awareness through making environmental sustainability a part of every student’s learning experience.

This strategy also emphasizes adopting sustainability practices, which will hopefully allow Luther to reduce its carbon footprint by 50 percent.

“The care of creation is something that is central to the Christian faith and is morally the right thing to do,” Assistant to the President Karen Martin-Schramm said. “Although this may be difficult, if Luther can become a model of environmental stewardship, we will connect as a college and also with the surrounding area of Northeastern Iowa.”

Another aspect of the strategic plan is connecting faith, learning and the larger world. This includes investing in faculty and staff by building Luther’s institutional commitment to hiring a diverse faculty and staff and creating a Fund for Transformational Teaching and Learning, which provides encouragement and resources necessary for these faculty and staff members to reach high expectations set by the college.

Also, this portion focuses on strengthening Luther’s mission and integrating learning, whether through an increase in opportunities for study-away experiences or student internships. Through this process, Luther hopes to achieve a 70 percent participation in internships by students from all levels.

“What matters most to me is the broad attempt to increase the endowment and advance the academic quality of Luther College, and I’m interested in endowing programs that will allow students to experiment outside of the classroom,” Professor of Political Science and Director of Ethics and Public Life, John Moeller said. “We’ve always encouraged internships, but now we want to up the ante and make them more par for the course. These types of plans involve a trajectory that continues a movement toward becoming a better college.”

The final aspect of this strategic plan encompasses connecting people, place and the Luther experience. By working on enrollment, student retention or engaging constituents, Luther hopes to extend the Luther community through things like building the applicant pool to ensure a larger first-year entering class or increasing the number of parent and alumni involvement with the college.

Associated with the strategic plan is the Sesquicentennial Fund, which serves as a companion plan to raise $50 million to support the plan’s strategies. Contributions can be made through current gifts, or cash and pledges, gifts of appreciated property or planned gifts like charitable trusts or life insurance policies.

Ultimately, this strategic plan stresses the importance of bringing people together to work toward the betterment of campus and external realities. With Luther’s former plan’s success rate of addressing and achieving 95 percent of its recommendations, “Transformed by the Journey” looks to have a promising future.

“This 2008 plan focuses on people,” President Rick Torgerson said. “Through students, faculty, staff and programs, we seek new ways to strengthen the intersection of faith and learning that lead to transforming experiences, discover new strategies to better engage students with the world, and better define ways our uncommon location shapes the expression of community at Luther.”