Strategy Session

For the first time in 50 years, Grinnell faculty have approved a new requirement as part of the individually advised curriculum. The new course, First-Year Experience: Connections, is offered during the spring semester to first-year students. The course is discussion-based and experiential and introduces students to important ideas about wellness, diversity, and respectful dialogue across difference. It delivers on the College’s stated mission and core values.

The FYE course was first proposed in 2016, arising out of work by the Task Force on Residential Learning, which was appointed in 2015 by then-President Raynard S. Kington. Task force members learned that stress, anxiety, depression, and sleep difficulties are the top four negative impacts on academics and proposed a curriculum around topics like wellness, coping strategies, diversity, and social justice.

We want all students to be healthy and well and to feel a sense of belonging, inclusive of their identities and backgrounds. Created by staff in Student Affairs, we (the First-Year Experience leadership team) delivered a developmentally appropriate curriculum for 18- and 19-year-olds that includes six content modules: personal sustainability and help-seeking, exploring personal identities, dialogue across difference, diversity and social justice, building a culture of respect, and mentorship.

We piloted the course iteratively for four years, and during the final two years, all first-year students were included. We conducted a comprehensive assessment that included feedback from both students and course facilitators (the course is taught by faculty and staff), and we made adjustments based on that assessment. Overall, student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

In fall 2020, 74% of our students said they’re more confident about identifying strategies for coping and self-care, 85% said they were more likely to use resources at Grinnell that can support their academic success, and 73% said they’re more likely to use resources that can support their personal well-being.

At the conclusion of the fall 2020 pilot, 75% of our students self-reported that they would be more interested in having conversations with people who are different from them. They also communicated that since they’ve taken the course, they’ve had meaningful conversations with people who are different from themselves and are more likely to recognize bias when it happens. One student shared that “my goal is to be as unbiased and respectful as possible and learning about identity and microaggressions gave me some new information to work with.”

Grinnell has a spectrum of supportive resources, but not all students use them. Two of many of the goals of this course are to increase the perceived benefits and reduce barriers to accessing this array of resources, and our efforts have achieved success so far. “The fact that [the course] exists at all makes me feel content about being a part of the Grinnell community because it shows that my school is concerned about every student’s well-being and individual success,” said another student.

We see this new course as one aspect of the overall arc of the first-year experience. The arc begins when students are admitted and continues through optional preorientations to New Student Orientation in August, quickly followed by their First-Year Tutorial class fall semester. We see the FYE: Connections course as a launching point into the second year and a first step toward a campus that appreciates our students’ holistic abilities to be their whole, authentic selves.

We are excited that the FYE: Connections course is already creating positive change where students feel included, are gaining skills to have meaningful and respectful conversations about difference, and are able to give themselves permission to be well and seek the resources they need to thrive at Grinnell.

This spring, just as we were emerging from one of the most challenging years in the history of higher education, the College began thinking about the future of higher education. Where do we as a living, learning community want to be in five years? In 10 years? What priorities will help us continue to grow and develop into a community that lives our values and ideals? These are the questions at the heart of strategic planning, a process in which the College engages every 10 years or so.

The past 10 years at Grinnell have seen growth in staffing and institutional capacity across campus, all with the goal of supporting our academic program and student experience. Now, we find ourselves in a position to consider the remarkable developments that emerged out of our previous strategic planning initiative and to identify the areas to which we will devote time, attention, and resources over the next 10 years.

Earlier this year, President Anne Harris set out five strategic principles for our coming planning process. She identified community; educational excellence and continuity; diversity, equity, and inclusion; health and well-being; and financial sustainability as the areas on which we will focus our collective planning efforts.

This spring, we held a series of virtual town halls for staff and faculty, with one session devoted to each of the planning principles. The goal of these town halls was to start creating shared understanding of the planning principles. To support this effort, our team prepared research briefs, assembling and sharing data from partners across campus. These briefs illustrate where we find ourselves on a wide range of issues connected to the strategic planning principles and establish a shared understanding as we move forward.

The town halls prioritized time for questions and answers, comments, and discussion. The virtual gatherings provided an important opportunity to begin charting a way forward together. We have identified an approach to strategic planning called collective impact to guide our work. Collective impact planning prioritizes drawing people together into coordinated action across multiple organizations or, in Grinnell’s case, across a single institution that values individual and departmental initiative and creativity. The town halls were a step in this process.

In the fall, we will begin opening more opportunities for engaging in the strategic planning process, including sharing essays that President Harris prepared for each strategic planning principle and the accompanying town hall research briefs. We will be seeking input, insights, and ideas from staff, faculty, current students, alumni, and friends of the College to identify a range of initiatives that will help us advance the College’s mission in the midst of changing higher education and demographic landscapes.

“ … the strategic planning process can facilitate … a campus culture in which more and more people find a place of belonging and opportunities to thrive.”

Our community is coming off of a year spent largely apart from one another and collectively grappling with ongoing realities of racial injustice. We hope that the strategic planning process can offer a platform to help rebuild some of our old connections with one another and forge new ones as well. We hope, too, that the strategic planning process can facilitate consideration of what lessons to draw from our experiences of the past year. Doing so can help us work toward a campus culture in which more and more people find a place of belonging and opportunities to thrive.

Most of all, as strategic planning co-leads, we look forward to facilitating a process that draws on the Grinnell College community’s collective wisdom as we chart a future together.

In November, the College announced that it would eliminate student loans in financial aid packages and replace them with scholarships. This initiative, unanimously endorsed by the Board of Trustees and effective in the fall of 2021 for all new and continuing students, was intended to reduce the debt burden on our students and their families in the midst of a pandemic and economic uncertainty.

One of the most enlightening things I learned in my formative years as an academic administrator is that access without support is not the same thing as opportunity. Whether in reference to tutoring, peer mentoring, advising, or any educational intervention, the optimal result is achieved only when support follows access. Some might say that access to a selective college is pointless without adequate support for those admitted. The question goes like this, “Why bother admitting a student if we cannot provide a program designed to enable their success?”

I believe the same should be asked of our admission and financial aid policies at Grinnell. What use is need-blind admission if we are unable to meet 100% of every student’s demonstrated financial need? More than any admission or financial aid policy we have at Grinnell, the commitment to meet need ensures that access to Grinnell is met by the opportunity to walk into new student orientation and across the commencement stage without the burden of looming educational indebtedness.

The pandemic’s impact on our economy has only heightened fears of educational indebtedness. In a recent survey of 31,000 high school seniors, 92% indicated they are feeling fear or anxiety, with their top concern being their ability to afford college.

Since March 2020, we have awarded more than $10 million in unscheduled financial aid to assist our students with new financial need during the pandemic. We know that all colleges are in the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat. Although it would be obtuse to ignore the immediate challenges facing our students and their families, questions persist about our ability to sustain such a generous financial aid policy in the long term.

Even before the no-loan initiative, Grinnell was spending more on grant assistance as a share of its annual operating expenses than any other institution committed to need-blind admission. Replacing student loans with scholarships and grants will place us in a decisive position of national leadership, and it will test our resolve.

While we were financially able to launch the no-loan initiative by shifting existing budgets, sustaining it over the long term is another matter. The usual perception is that our sizeable endowment can and will cover such costs. In reality, well before the pandemic hit, Grinnell was concerned about the limitations of a funding model that relies so heavily on its endowment. The fact is, even though our endowment is considerable, we were already spending the equivalent of half its value every 10 years to support our operating budget. For an institution committed to a long-term focus on access, diversity, and financial sustainability, that is just too much.

But another answer may come through the generosity of those who care most about our mission and have the capacity to support it through their philanthropy at any level. In order for our choices to continue to match our values and serve our mission, Grinnellians can, and I believe will, find ways to give back and stand with us in supporting this initiative. Doing so will not only help current students weather this unprecedented storm, but also allow future generations of students to graduate with less debt and more opportunity well after the pandemic is behind us.

Joe Bagnoli, Jr. has served as vice president for enrollment, dean of admission and financial aid since 2012. He is also father to Lilianna Bagnoli ’15 and four other children who have completed the college search and selection process.

This spring, I had the extraordinary privilege to speak to 70 Grinnell students and recent alumni who applied for competitive external fellowships this year. These remarkable people had summoned the courage to apply for awards like the Fulbright, Watson, Truman, Marshall, or Rhodes scholarships.

As I considered what I might offer by way of congratulations and advice, I recalled my own experiences as a history major at Pomona College, where my advisers had encouraged me to apply for such awards as well. I decided to apply for a Fulbright teaching fellowship to Ecuador. I had studied Spanish for eight years, both in high school and at college, and had achieved a high degree of fluency. I had studied abroad in Spain and was excited about the chance to work in Latin America. I was deeply interested in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations and was writing a senior thesis on the Alliance for Progress, the Kennedy administration’s signature foreign aid program. I extensively researched the country’s history, economy, and social structure. My interview with the college’s committee went well. They recommended me strongly, and I was thrilled to receive a letter from the Fulbright program informing me I was a finalist. Alas, about a month later I received another letter advising me that I had not, in fact, won the award.

I also applied for a Rhodes and a Marshall. Faculty friends and supporters told me that my interests in poverty and development would be attractive to selection committees. They noted that I had volunteered at a local elementary school, helping teach English as a second language to the children of recent immigrants. They suggested that my experience as a varsity athlete in cross country and track might be beneficial as well. After a grueling mock interview on campus, I was miraculously selected in a first-round Rhodes interview in my home state of Hawaii. The finalist interview, at the University of Southern California, did not go as well. I struggled to respond to hypothetical questions about information, security, and democracy. When the winners were announced that evening, I was not among the 32 award recipients. Instead of flying off to Oxford, I went back to my residence hall, promptly contracted the stomach flu, and was sick for a week. My pursuit of a Marshall scholarship for graduate study in the United Kingdom ended in a similar way. I applied, was a finalist, interviewed, and didn’t make the last cut.

The disappointment of coming so close and not winning can be hard to take. But looking back, I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. Learning to write about oneself and to interview are vital skills for the rest of one’s professional life, and I clearly benefited from the opportunity. More importantly, the application process — and its demand that one explore fundamental questions of purpose, meaning, and values — is an invitation to essential self-discovery. 

The really important question is not “What am I good at?” Grinnell College students, of course, are good at a lot of things! The vital, essential questions are instead “What do I care about? What matters to me? What might I be willing to commit myself to?” Those questions are of an entirely different order, and applying for such fellowships is an invitation to explore them in a thoughtful, reflective, and serious way.  Winning awards is great, and Grinnell students win many every year, but the real learning comes in the process of personal discernment.

A great liberal arts education truly liberates you; it enables you to discover talents, interests, and abilities you didn’t know you possessed and to bring them to bear in a world that truly needs your help. Supported by a wonderful and devoted faculty and staff, Grinnell’s students learn, grow, and stretch themselves toward that goal each day.

As I depart Grinnell this summer to become president of Punahou School in Honolulu, I carry with me a deep sense of admiration for Grinnell’s community. After five years, my confidence in the College’s vital mission is stronger than ever.

As I considered the possibility of accepting a position to lead Grinnell’s development and alumni relations team, I asked myself a number of questions. Was I really willing to move from Indianapolis to Iowa, where I did not have any family or friends? Would I find an engaging and supportive professional community that would help me grow? Who would help take care of my dog, Summit, while I traveled? Would Summit and I find a welcoming community on a personal level? The more I wondered about these questions, the more aware I became of just how important having a strong and supportive community is to me, and the more I realized I might have been taking my own personal and professional communities for granted. Vowing to change that, I am trying to be more mindful every day of the importance of community. 

Communities form around people who have some common interest, goal, or experience. The experience of going to college in Grinnell, Iowa, is one thing that connects all of our alumni. Some components of that experience — faculty, academic programs, student organizations, and administrations — change over time for various reasons. But one thing that seems to remain constant, regardless of graduation year, is the fact that Grinnell alumni are passionate, invested, and actively engaged in making the world a better place, even if they do not always agree on how to go about it.

This is perfectly normal. Community members are not required to agree with each other. In fact, I strongly believe that divergent and diverse opinions bring necessary perspective to dialogue when communicated in an appropriate way. For at least the past decade, I have been telling the teams I lead that liking and/or agreeing with each other is not required to accomplish our objectives. However, what is required is for team members always to communicate in a professional, respectful, and kind manner. In my experience, communicating in these ways is how communities get stronger, problems are solved, and the world becomes a better place.

Grinnell College has had to address some contentious issues in the short time I have been a part of the community. In my role, I hear from a great number of alumni who want to share their opinions on such issues. Often, the alum will begin by saying, “I love Grinnell College and want to continue supporting it, but I’m struggling with this …” and then they go on to very carefully and rationally lay out their data points on whatever issue they want to discuss. In these instances, the analytical and critical thinking skills that are so fundamental to a liberal arts education and are such a hallmark of a Grinnell College degree are on full and beautiful display. I have come to think of this as “channeling their inner Grinnellian,” and I respect, admire, and appreciate such thoughtfulness and true devotion to the Grinnell College community.  

I look forward to meeting as many Grinnellians as possible in the months and years to come and to hearing your ideas on how we can continue to strengthen the Grinnell College community and thereby move closer to accomplishing our common goal of making the world a better place. 

With thanks for all you do for Grinnell College and for welcoming me into your community,

P.S. Nearly eight months into my Grinnell adventure, my initial questions have been affirmatively answered. Summit and I have found the Grinnell community to be incredibly thoughtful, welcoming, and supportive on a professional and personal level. Our next-door-neighbor brought us homemade brownies while we moved in, we have a Grinnell College student who sometimes stays with Summit when I travel, my colleagues are incredibly smart, talented, and inspiring, and the alumni I have had a chance to meet have made me feel instantly welcomed. This is, indeed, a special community.

In August 2018, 463 first-year students representing 46 states and 20 countries matriculated at Grinnell. They are one of our most diverse classes ever: 19 percent are international students; 15 percent are first-generation college students; and 28 percent are domestic students of color, a record-setting number at Grinnell. 

How do we give these talented new students the best chance to thrive, grow, and excel? That is the kind of important question that has been central to the work of the College’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion (CDI), a working group made of faculty, staff, and students. 

Last year, under the capable leadership of Lakesia Johnson, chief diversity officer, and Maure Smith-Benanti, director of intercultural affairs, the CDI drafted the Grinnell College Diversity and Inclusion Plan, a powerful and evolving document that not only highlights our ongoing work in the area of diversity and inclusion, but also serves as a blueprint for the challenging, sometimes imperfect, but increasingly essential work we need to do in the years ahead.

Our plan defines diversity as “that which makes us different from each other, including who we are, where we’re from, what we believe, who we love, our current circumstances, abilities, and lived experiences.” This plan challenges us to do the hard work those values demand. It also illuminates not only the success we have had so far but also the challenges that will require our resources, energy, and innovation in the years ahead. Simply put, a college that values diversity and inclusion must invest in diversity and inclusion.

Under the newly drafted plan, we will continue to strengthen our experience for all first-year students, developing new programs such as our first-year common read program and special First-Year Tutorial sections focused on diversity. These are specifically aimed at helping students respectfully discuss issues of difference and incorporate the values of diversity and inclusion into their academic and extracurricular lives from day one.

The new plan also underscores the indispensable role faculty members play in building a diverse and inclusive campus community. Already, the CDI has helped develop better approaches to recruiting new faculty. This includes offering implicit bias training to student representatives participating in faculty searches and the establishment of the Grinnell Equity Advocates, specially-trained peers who assist their colleagues in conducting fair and bias-free search processes. 

Meanwhile, current Grinnell faculty members continue their own educations each year, participating in a variety of summer workshops that help them build more inclusive classrooms and design fully-accessible learning materials. Through our continuing partnership with the Mellon Mays Foundation, Grinnell College faculty work to diversify the academy, by participating in a mentorship program that provides resources and support to talented undergraduates from underrepresented communities who are considering graduate study in selected fields. 

Some of the investments that our alumni and donors have already made in specific areas of Grinnell College have, in fact, been investments in these values of diversity and inclusion. For example, support for the Center for Careers, Life, and Service (CLS) has helped ensure that all students can access funding to attend academic conferences, tap networking opportunities, and travel to job interviews. The CLS can also help qualified students purchase the professional attire they need to be confident and successful at these events. This kind of work helps us ensure that all students thrive, not only upon entering Grinnell College, but also upon graduating from it. 

We are working on building a community that ensures we can offer a transformative liberal arts education to all our students, no matter what their background. We believe we can only offer this kind of education when we have a community of differing perspectives, opinions, backgrounds, identities, and experiences working side by side in a peaceful yet challenging environment. 

We also believe that this kind of education produces the open-minded, flexible, driven, courageous, and bold global citizens our world will need in the decades ahead. In short, we believe that this transformational work on our campus can eventually transform the world.

When John Kispert ’85 and Jill Goldberg Kispert put the final arrangements together for a gift to support intercollegiate athletics, it helped the College gain more focus about how designated giving would strengthen programming across campus. 

The Kispert gift is slated to support the athletic department’s vision for equity. We evaluated our overall program, and as a result we saw a need to develop a full-time position for an assistant coach in women’s athletics. This plan will not only support one or two women’s teams, it will also completely equalize the number of full-time employees working with men’s and women’s sports. An equitable ledger of support for both genders is very hard to achieve, yet it is important when focusing on federal employment standards shaped by Title IX. We view the Kisperts’ gift as a unique opportunity to impact gender equity in a valuable way.

Since the enactment of Title IX in 1972, Grinnell has maintained intercollegiate competition for both men and women. Our athletics directors during that period, John Pfitsch, Dee Fairchild, and Greg Wallace, all approached the task of creating gender balance and equity as a high priority. So being associated with the athletic department since 1981, I was instilled with concepts of balance and equal support for men and women. John and Jill Kispert were products of the same period of athletics history, and they lived out the struggle to envision and support athletics in an equitable way. Moreover, they keenly observe the functions of athletics for their two teenage children, who are making their way through club and school athletics competition.

A supplementary benefit from the gift is the opportunity to create a more robust, overall assistant coaching structure. This change was recommended through external reviews in 2007 and 2018. Heading into the fall of 2018, every team sport program will be supported by a half-time assistant coach. 

This change is significant because the Pioneer athletic department maintains a practice where head coaches are faculty, and they have coaching assignments for two sports. This concept is unique for selective liberal arts institutions. Our peer NCAA Division III institutions tend to have coaches lead only one sport with no faculty duties. I see this part of the Kispert gift as paramount to combating the stresses of two-sport coaches and enabling more success in our athletics program. 

The College and our athletic department are moving into an exciting time of our history. In recent years we have seen growth in designated giving, which is enriching the campus, our curriculum, programming, and opportunities for our students. It is clear that John and Jill evaluated this giving opportunity as a way to strengthen and advance a part of the cocurricular experience we provide our student-athletes. In many ways, their gift is already inspiring engagement and ideas from other potential donors who are finding and supporting their passions at Grinnell College. 

We are in the midst of focused and unique growth at the College. I am excited to see us strengthen our educational opportunities in the future, especially in the area of athletics. 

— Originally published in The Grinnell Magazine, Summer 2018.

At the spring 2018 meeting of the Grinnell College Board of Trustees, the Fossil Fuels and Climate Impact Task Force issued its recommendations about climate impact and divestment. The board voted to accept our recommendations, which are briefly outlined below.

We — Michael Kahn ’74 (chair), Kathryn Jagow Mohrman ’67, and Edward Senn ’79 — spent nearly a year researching, reading, listening, and discussing the issues related to fossil fuel divestment and other actions the College could take to positively impact climate. We made it a priority to conduct our work in an open-minded, intellectually rigorous, transparent, and inclusive manner. Our detailed final report and all research materials are available online (grinnell.edu/about/trustees/fossil-fuels-task-force). 

Recommendations related to climate change and sustainability

We believe that the most effective way for Grinnell College to have a positive impact on climate change is to reduce its carbon footprint. To this end, we strongly endorsed the Grinnell College Sustainability Plan, also available at the link above. Since energy consumption is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions at the College, we particularly recommend the continuation of efforts, referenced in the Sustainability Plan, to replace the College’s fossil-fuel–based electricity supply with renewable energy alternatives. 

We also recommended creating a standing campus Sustainability Committee composed of faculty, staff, students, and alumni to coordinate efforts and bring greater focus, visibility, and momentum to the many excellent recommendations included in the Sustainability Plan. We recommended annual progress reports to the Board of Trustees and the College community on the implementation of the Sustainability Plan and other campus climate actions outlined in our report.

Recommendations related to divestment

During our deliberations about whether or not to recommend divestment of fossil fuel holdings, we considered many factors and sought to answer a series of questions, including: 

• Does divestment from fossil fuel companies directly and effectively impact climate change?
• Would divesting from fossil fuels adversely impact our endowment returns and thereby diminish our ability to fulfill our educational mission?

Having considered a great deal of information and diverse perspectives, we recommended that the College should not divest from fossil fuel holdings in our endowment. Although divestment actions have been effective in raising public awareness, there is little evidence that such actions have had any direct impact on climate or changed the policies and behavior of fossil fuel companies. To the contrary, there is growing evidence that engaged investors are having increasing impact in changing the policies of these companies. We further concluded that divestment would introduce significant investment risk in the endowment, jeopardizing the generous financial aid and educational excellence that are so heavily dependent on endowment funding and strong investment returns. 

We recommended that Grinnell’s Investment Committee and Investment Office take actions to enhance existing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capabilities and increase shareholder engagement, where appropriate, reporting to the full Board of Trustees with a plan for accomplishing this goal. We believe enhancing the application of shareholder engagement and ESG diligence and monitoring enables us to have impact on issues such as climate change without having to change the way we manage our endowment.

We also recommended that the Investment Committee assess the feasibility of creating a separately managed fund within the endowment that would allow future contributions to be managed in a fossil-fuel–free portfolio at the request of the donor and that the Investment Committee consider the use of additional socially responsible investment criteria in the construction of such a fund.

We were inspired by the Grinnell College community’s passion for confronting the climate change issue. We believe our collective Grinnellian commitment to implementing the report recommendations can and will make a difference in addressing climate change. 

In October of 2017, I had the pleasure of speaking with alumni volunteers on campus during Volunteer Weekend about the work of the admission and financial aid offices. I quizzed their memories of the college search process that eventually brought them to Grinnell College. Most of the non-Iowans in the room were willing to admit to some reservations, as high school seniors, about the idea of going to college in Iowa. These alumni, of course, are among our most passionate and committed, who volunteer their time in service to the mission of Grinnell College. Clearly, they are grateful they did not allow their initial apprehensions about enrolling at Grinnell to dissuade them. Our location is the most significant impediment to student recruitment.

For all the reasons why generations of Grinnell alumni are so loyal to their alma mater, we continue to fly Grinnell’s flag high above the fields of corn that surround our campus. While the beauty of the Iowa prairie and the possibilities that call from J.B. Grinnell’s “ideal community” initially escape many prospective students, it is our desire in the Offices of Admission and Financial Aid to identify students with Grinnellian qualities and to persuade them to pursue the dreams that come alive just beyond the corn tassels. Like many of our alumni, they do not choose Grinnell because of our location; many choose Grinnell in spite of it, and we’re learning through research to reframe our location as a positive when they discover more compelling things that distinguish us from our peers. 

The morass of college admission publications makes it especially important to define and declare our distinctive competencies. In an environment where many colleges claim similar strengths, it is crucial that we reveal a Grinnell that is real (authentic to who we are), relevant (compelling to prospective students), and rare (not easily found at other places). What is it we can say of Grinnell to satisfy those standards and inspire interest among prospective students? We interviewed over 350 well-qualified prospects to determine how they would answer that question. 

It turned out that some of our initial assumptions were incorrect. For example, prospects were not as interested in self-governance as we anticipated. Many more were interested in our academic reputation, the individually advised curriculum, our focus on global perspectives, research, experiential learning, and preparation for a successful career. Perhaps the most important finding from our study was that only when programs at Grinnell are perceived as integral to every student’s experience did most prospects find them compelling. Through important investments we have made in programs that impact all of our students, regardless of family financial resources, it is possible for us to distinguish Grinnell in ways that matter to prospective students.

This is our promise. Through a range of exceptional programs, learning spaces, and the support of a world-class faculty and staff, Grinnell still offers a boldly individualized approach to learning for intellectually engaged students and we help them navigate a complex world so they can contribute to the common good. What distinguishes us is not that we offer an exemplary academic program, undergraduate research, global learning, and career development, but that we offer these things to every student. Our task is to convince qualified prospects that they can find such an experience here. Like so many who have found reasons to love Grinnell and accept the role our prairie location plays in this experience, our intention is to lift up what makes us uniquely Grinnell so that generations of new Grinnellians can join us in this “field of dreams.”