Lizzy Donker
Executive Editor
Sewanee’s strategic planning process has featured a series of focus groups and town hall meetings to encourage faculty, staff, students and community members to help shape plans for the University’s coming years. Since January, the sessions have been led by Dr. Dawn Wiese, former vice president for student affairs at Washington and Lee, as a consultant to facilitate these conversations. The administration asked Dr. Weise to help lead the discussions as an outside consultant because she is knowledgeable about Sewanee and liberal arts colleges, and she has assisted a variety of organizations with strategic planning processes.
Following the final strategic planning town hall meeting last week, The Purple sat down with Wiese for a Q & A on the process and her role as an outside consultant. The conversation has been lightly edited:
Tell me about yourself and why you’re here at Sewanee and involved with the strategic plan.
My career has been in higher education. I’ve spent 20 years on campuses, always liberal arts colleges and actually liberal arts colleges in the Southeast. I have known Sewanee because of that through the years. The college where I was working when I was doing my PhD was Guilford College. …The title of my dissertation was strategic planning and its effect on student recruitment retention at small private liberal arts colleges, so its always been sort of my primary interest in thinking about how are decisions made, why are decisions made the way they are, and also understanding that part of strategic planning is getting buy-in from the community. And you certainly saw that here today.
…At Washington and Lee university, I was the Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, and I was at W&L for 10 years. Then I went into private consulting for 10 years and often worked in strategic planning. I actually have another ful-ttime job, but still higher education related; it’s actually in the insurance industry. So I work a lot with risk and things like that, but I took that job with the understanding that if there were consulting jobs I really wanted to do, I would be able to do them. And so when this [strategic planning effort at Sewanee] came about I said I would love to do it if they wanted to work with me.
Why are you specifically interested in working with Sewanee on this project?
John McCardell was the long-time Vice-Chancellor before Brigety came and was a Washington and Lee alum. He had been President of Middlebury and then retired, and at that point he was on W&L’s Board of Trustees. So I worked with him quite a bit in my role at W&L, and he was on the committee I worked with. So then W&L had an opening as President, and I think we all thought he was going to apply. He didn’t apply, and I was on the search committee for that president so I thought he was serious about retiring. And then I’ll be darn if he didn’t come to Sewanee. When I went into consulting work, Sewanee was one of my first projects in 2012 with John McCardell, and I worked very closely with John Shackelford… so I’ve known Sewanee over the years in many different ways. And so when [Sewanee] was going through administrative transitions, my phone was ringing a lot because I knew so many people and I just think Sewanee is a cool place. It’s just a really cool place, and to be able to work with strategic planning at Sewanee is very attractive to me.
Can you talk more about the process of strategic planning and your involvement in that?
What I hope I’m bringing to the process is an external voice, an external lens. For example, as we think about the conversation that we had today on DEI [and why a prior draft strategic plan included DEI as a fourth pillar, while the current plan did not, even though that was the only part of the previous draft plan strongly supported by Sewanee’s faculty. In the town hall discussion, some people questioned that decision, while others noted that DEI was going to be prominently featured in each of the three pillars included in the current draft plan].
That’s a tough topic and if I were someone up there who was internal and made that decision, then that person might defend the decision they made. I wasn’t defending the decision. Instead, I’m like ‘This was a really important point and something that needs to be brought back.’ nd that’s why people who are external are sometimes important in processes. My interest is that the strategic planning process goes as well as it possibly can. I’m not here to defend anything; I’m just here to push this process forward in the best way possible. Another thing I bring would be expertise. I know something of strategic planning that could be of value to the people who are here in this process. Thirdly, somebody to do the work, just typing up those notes, and if you’re not hiring someone to do that, it means it’s on someone else’s plate. And so that’s what my role is–doing the work, having an outside lens, and bringing some expertise to the process.
Who are you making your recommendations to?
To the strategic planning committee and that committee has students, faculty, staff, and administration on it. My feedback is going to be that I’ve been communicating the importance of DEI. People are wanting to see it. There’s somebody from each aspect that’s supposed to attend these so that when I write things down, they can contextualize it. We have to make sure it’s officially there, as we heard, so it’s a different way of looking at it.
On the topic of bringing in all of the different voices, especially of students, I know that was a big topic brought up today, students saying, “we’re not involved in this process how can we be more involved?” Do you have any advice on that or maybe plans of action towards that?
I don’t have plans of action. It’s important that you capture that this is Sewanee’s process, I just make sure that the information moves. This is the first time that I’ve heard students feel excluded, so I know that I sat through three weeks of focus groups, and one student focus group only had one student in it. Up until today, I would have taken it as student apathy. So my feedback is going to be I think we need to think about how we are making sure students are feeling more included.
How is this strategic plan different from the last one?
Incredibly…Well, I would say that that strategic plan was made with the greatest intent at a really difficult time, when we needed a plan and planning during the pandemic, and you had an administrative change. And now, we really need to take the next steps seriously.
Can you talk about some of the concerns that you’ve heard coming from students and faculty, maybe that were even just brought up today?
Let’s do the DEI one. I had heard a little bit about that, but not like today. Students hadn’t heard that at all until today, because I’m the one who said it. I’d like to hear from more students, and so I got myself invited to some things, and that’s why I met with the student government the night before last. I’ve heard concerns about workload, I’ve heard about the need to invest in departments, and absolutely about the quality of housing across the board. Lighting has come up, transportation across the board for people who get here and they feel like they’re here they can’t even get to the Piggly Wiggly. Also about Bacchus and what the role of Bacchus is. I’ve heard about the student experience and making sure students feel like they have a voice in policy making that’s come up and not just about the strategic plan policy–more broadly about the policies that affect your lives.
I’m curious if the issues of Greek Life have come to your attention. I know they were brought up in the last town hall meeting and there’s a lot of concern within the student body with the way that the administration communicates with Greek Life so what have you heard about that?
I would say that would come up in the area of student involvement and policy making.
It’s come up as an area of concern, and that’s how it’s recorded. But I will add that I have never heard anything that appears to be a threat to the future of Greek Life in any of this. In fact, I’ve heard only support from the planning process. I’ve only heard we need to make sure Greek Life is robust but also not crazy.
Being an outsider from Sewanee, is there anything that you notice about The University or maybe appreciate that maybe we don’t because we’re so used to it?
There’s so much. I could go on and on. The mere fact that people show up to this kind of thing is awesome. People care, so I’ll start there and see how deeply people really treasure this institution. That’s not always the case. That’s something really special and beautiful, having the Domain and the fact that the institution is thinking ‘how do we make sure the Domain touches the lives of everyone who lives here’ – that’s really beautiful. I would say something else that’s really struck me in some really lovely conversations has been the role of the Episcopal identity. People here are very kind, and I think that that’s probably part of it. The faculty clearly care about students, and that’s really fabulous, I can honestly only say positive things about Sewanee.
Every institution has its things. It’s sort of like as people–we all have our things, and I truly believe that Sewanee is working on being the best version of itself. And that’s truly an amazing thing.
Is there anything else you want to share or think people should know?
This is Sewanee’s plan. It doesn’t even belong to the strategic planning steering committee. It’s ultimately Sewanee’s plan. So what we have to do is make sure people feel like it’s Sewanee’s plan. But not everybody in the community can write a plan; you have to have a representative body. It’s just like with government. That’s what Sewanee is trying to do. And so we have a responsibility to make sure people feel like their voice is heard in this process.