Dr. Jonathan Palmer on Strategic Planning

Greetings from Principia, where we’re fastening our seat belts in preparation for another invigorating academic year! In a few short weeks, both campuses will be alive with activity as the students return for sports camps, and classes will resume soon thereafter.

As Principia’s new chief executive and continuing College president, I would like to take this opportunity to bring you up to date on Principia’s strategic planning process.

Our planning efforts have included alumni, parents, friends, faculty, staff, and students through a variety of events, meetings, and online surveys. All of this has been supported by an active Trustee subcommittee on strategic planning.

Principia’s founder Mary Kimball Morgan wisely counseled in a 1910 edition of The Principia Alumnus, “It must be possible to establish some basis of operation that will offer an unchanging foundation upon which may be erected a perfect educational structure . . .” (Education at The Principia, p. 5).

Mrs. Morgan and her colleagues established this unchanging foundation for Principia through the Purpose and Policies, which now undergird all of our strategic initiatives. We also have regularly referred to the “Intended Outcome of a Principia Education,” which was written to assist Principia’s strategic-planning efforts in 2001–02. During the past year, these documents helped the School faculty and staff develop specific Learning Principles and the College faculty and staff design Learning Themes and Outcomes to help guide our curriculum development on each campus.

A subcommittee on strategic planning, which is coordinating the development of the strategic plan, has been working actively on values and vision statements that support Principia’s mission statement as clearly articulated in Policy 1: “The Principia shall seek to serve the Cause of Christian Science through appropriate channels open to it as an educational institution.”

We have also been working with leaders across Principia to develop specific five-year strategic plans in the areas of academics, athletics, character education, facilities, financial resources, marketing, advancement, and organizational processes.

Over the coming months we will have additional meetings on both campuses to engage in dialogue regarding these strategies and finalize our ideas for recommendation to the Board of Trustees at their mid-November meeting.

As we move forward, I welcome your input. Many thanks to those of you who responded to the survey regarding strategic planning sent last year. Your views have been a vital source of inspiration and direction for this important process.

At Principia, we are fortunate to have a strong foundation on which to build. As Mrs. Morgan told Principia parents at a meeting in 1931, “Principia is striving to help you to bring up your children ‘in the nurture and admonition of the Lord’ (Eph. 6:4). We are deeply interested in learning better how to be true to these ‘foundational trusts,’ and together, under the guidance of divine wisdom, we pray that we may achieve the ‘purpose of true education’” (Education at The Principia, p. 24).

Please note: In the future, you can access Dr. Jonathan Palmer’s monthly updates on Principia Wire’s home page just below the calendar.