Strategic Plan

The integration of engineering as part of the liberal arts is rooted deeply in Lafayette’s common core, and we remain dedicated to realizing the range of opportunities this combination affords across the full curriculum and beyond. Through this plan, we will build upon the strength of existing collaborative initiatives and interdisciplinary programs while generating new resources, spaces, and faculty lines for an educational experience that guarantees opportunities to discover, design, inquire, and create across domains of knowledge. Specific goals include:

• Improve structures and increase potential for faculty and students to work across existing departments and programs, at the intersections of the liberal arts, engineering, and beyond
• Expand opportunities for social innovation, creative scholarship and activity, entrepreneurial mindsets, and inclusive collaboration and integration across centers, the libraries, and academic departments and programs
• Refine and resource academic advising to ensure close advising and mentorship structures informed by the range of possibilities implicit in the “And” across the four-year experience
• Increase resources and endowed funding in the Office of the Provost to encourage the scholarship, research, mentorship, and travel crucial to recruiting and retaining a world-class faculty
• Create an Interdisciplinary Challenge Lab that invites faculty and students from across the institution to collaborate on projects and identify solutions to societal problems

Lafayette has long valued experiential learning, community engagement, and the interplay between coursework and professional opportunities locally and globally. Through this plan, we will strengthen infrastructure and funding to provide increased access to cocurricular learning experiences, including undergraduate research and creative projects, internships, place-based and global learning experiences, including study abroad and community-engaged scholarship. Specific goals include:

• Extend opportunities across scholarship, pedagogy, and experiential learning for students to engage in Easton and the Lehigh Valley, including connections to potential employers and training in pre-professional pathways that encourage students to consider the Lehigh Valley as a viable and attractive employment destination
• Offer expanded pathways for global connection and development for all members of the Lafayette community, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni
• Create a support structure for economic and community development ensuring that the College is an active participant in the growth and success of the city of Easton and the Lehigh Valley
• Optimize resources and support structures for faculty and staff who supervise, design, and/or direct student experiential learning opportunities
• Build on our exceptional career services, undergraduate, graduate, and pre-professional advising through robust partnerships with our alumni via mentoring, internships, student leadership, and other experiential opportunities

As an institution committed to the liberal arts, Lafayette is deeply involved in scholarly and experiential explorations of democracy and the technologies that mediate it. The digital infrastructures and tools that affect our lives, our communities, and our institutions are crucial to understand and shape, and Lafayette is at the forefront of doing so. Through interdisciplinary approaches, the scholarship, research, and pedagogy of Lafayette faculty invite us to develop more empowered intellectual proactivity. Across areas including but not limited to AI and machine ethics; critical information studies; administrative law and technology; creative arts and design; and engineering and scientific research, our faculty and students explore how technologies both inform and form the societies we inhabit. Combined with a rich cocurricular framework across student residential life and activities that emphasize democratic principles and restorative practices, our faculty and staff will support student learning and engagement toward active global citizenship. Specific goals toward this aim include:

• Build a campus-wide Democracy and Its Technologies Initiative with national reach that includes faculty and staff lines, programming, new spaces for collaborative encounters, curricular engagement, and extensive public engagement
• Leverage Lafayette’s strengths across the liberal arts, engineering, interdisciplinary, and cocurricular programming to create forums for exploring AI, design, ethics, and equitable uses of technology
• Promote the conditions for civic participation and public discourse both on campus and across the globe through the practice of constructive dialogue across our shared community
• Integrate components of digital fluency and creativity across the curriculum, inviting students to build strategies and expertise across their four years at Lafayette regardless of major or minor
• Provide a cocurricular framework across residential life, student activities, and advising that fosters a diverse and inclusive learning ground for democratic and restorative practices

Inclusivity and belonging are vital components of a campus that values the well-being of its students, faculty, and staff, and are critical to creating a healthy and environmentally sustainable living and learning community. Through this plan, the College will further cultivate the conditions for mutual trust and an appreciation for the unique contributions of each individual to the lives of those around them as well as the influence we each have on the natural world of which we are a part. From this place of connection, we will advance a thriving residential program, capitalize on the full power of athletics to build collaboration and leadership, and deepen the value of the curricular and cocurricular engagement every student enjoys. Specific goals include:

• Create and reimagine natural and built spaces that support accessibility, environmental sustainability, and well-being
• Engage campus as a “living laboratory” where research and programming support our commitments to sustainability through care for and study of our natural world
• Leverage the residential living and learning experience, including the creation of distinctive residential communities, common gathering spaces, and equitable standards of living throughout the residential system, to foster inclusion, interpersonal growth, and leadership development
• Expand student health and counseling services, prevention, and wellness programming, and ensure that all students have consistent and affordable access to basic needs
• Structure a student success hub that brings together resources from across the campus to provide equitable access and enhanced opportunities for student learning and engagement
• Center and celebrate the College’s Division I athletics and recreation programming as a resource for building health and well-being, competitive spirit, and excellence, and as a source of connection, joy, play, and pride in our community
• Increase investments in an inclusive workplace environment with opportunities for healthy work/life integration and deepen institutional commitment to recruitment, retention, and development of diverse faculty and staff

To meet the commitments set forth in this plan, faculty, staff, and students must have access to the tools necessary to achieve these goals. A sustained focus on excellence requires investment in and careful stewardship of such fundamental resources as a diverse and inclusive workforce, a high-quality physical plant, and an exceptional digital and financial infrastructure. Through this plan, we intentionally foreground purposeful sustainability with our mission and values close at hand. Specific goals include:

• Refine and implement an equitable compensation strategy that optimizes the College’s ability to recruit, maintain, and develop the diverse talents and abilities of both faculty and staff
• Invest in opportunities for professional growth and development for faculty and staff, including training, mentoring, and leadership development
• Continue our commitment to excellence and affordability through innovative processes and practices that open the doors of Lafayette to talented students from all backgrounds
• Design physical and virtual learning and living spaces that demonstrate our commitment to environmental sustainability, accessibility, belonging, and inclusion
• Support and sustain foundational infrastructure (physical, systematic, financial, digital) that meets the needs of faculty, staff, and students in a data and technology-rich environment, including ensuring that classroom and lab spaces provide innovative and creative modalities for teaching and learning
• Build campus planning and operations around principles of environmentally sustainable development guided by the most current Climate Action Plan, including improving connectivity between our three physical campuses