The Bethel Board of Directors unanimously approved a strategic plan that has been in development since 2014 and is designed to carry the college through 2022.
“The board is appreciative of the hard work of the Strategic Planning Task Force and is excited about new initiatives on the horizon for the college,” Board Chair Heather Esau Zerger ’96 said.
Private colleges in particular are vulnerable in what Bethel President Perry D. White calls “treacherous times in higher education.”
He cited “a tremendous increase in federal regulations, the call to make education more affordable while demanding easily assessed and sometimes rather shallow outcomes and, in Bethel’s case, a state that may seek to remove tax-exempt status for educational institutions.
“This environment makes it necessary to do aggressive and innovative organizational planning, not only to survive but to thrive.”
Work on the Bethel strategic plan began in 2014 with the selection of Credo Higher Education, a consulting firm that specializes in small, church-affiliated institutions.
Credo staff facilitated the process of collecting the ideas of stakeholder groups (faculty, staff, students, administrative team, alumni, Newton-area leaders and board), helped assess the collected data based on national trends and will continue to guide and monitor, through a software program, the first 14 months of plan implementation.
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