Dear members of the Bates community,

As we all begin the work of a new academic year, I want to share some thoughts on Bates’ plans and priorities for the months ahead. 

Strategic Planning

Earlier this week, you received a message inviting you to read the draft strategic plan and share your thoughts on it. I hope that you will take the time to do both. It is, after all, the result of many months of work by many of you — and it outlines a set of priorities, aspirations, and areas of focus for the next chapter of the college.

The next steps in the strategic planning effort will be revision and refinement of the draft, taking into consideration the feedback we receive from you and from the broader Bates community. The faculty will have the opportunity to endorse the plan. Ultimately, the plan will be presented for formal approval by the Board of Trustees. The final plan will form the basis for Bates’ next comprehensive fundraising campaign.

But just because the plan is not yet signed, sealed, and delivered does not mean that we are sitting around until that time before tackling critical projects. We are already working on many of the important initiatives described in the draft plan, including those you can read more about below.

Supporting Students

One of the key areas of focus for both Academic Affairs and Student Affairs is strengthening Bates’ system of student advising and support, enhancing the four-year arc of the Bates experience for all students. Beginning this winter term, we will soft launch the Center for Student Success: a central hub for student resources, offering clear wayfinding through the institution and providing coordinated support. The pilot phase will allow us to test this new system — which is designed to serve as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, our foundational faculty pre-major advising model.

During this initial pilot phase, the Center will begin with a targeted scope and limited staffing capacity, with the hope of expanding its operations and functional programming over time. Ultimately, we aim for the Center to help students navigate robust academic pathways, make college resources clear and accessible, and partner with faculty and staff to ensure every student experiences consistent, integrated support across all four years at Bates.

In addition, we will further develop our concept of  “pathways” offerings — another major component of the strategic plan. Here we are talking about having a rich set of curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular resources and opportunities available to students so that they can, individually, customize a set of experiences for exploring and advancing academic and other interests and career ambitions in a clear and cohesive way. Some of those resources and opportunities already exist, but more can be built. 

We will also be looking at ways to ameliorate areas that have proven to create undue challenges to students, including course registration, access to gateway courses, support for transfer students, and accessibility of learning materials.

Supporting Staff and Faculty

As we have for the past few years, we will continue to focus on ensuring that all who work at Bates, and dedicate so much of their time and talent to the college, have the support they need to thrive and feel a sense of belonging within our college community. This will take many shapes, including:

• We will continue to develop and offer programs related to community building and professional development that respond to needs expressed in the employee engagement survey. These include In Good Company, the Supervisor Success Series, the Staff/Faculty Relations Committee, and Wellness Ambassadors. 
• This year, we launched our revamped Ombuds Program, now fully operational, with a team of seven faculty and staff available as impartial and confidential resources to help any employee find a path toward resolution of workplace concerns. 
• We will hold the next two gatherings in the Lake Andrews Series, the semesterly program launched last spring to give all staff and faculty the opportunity to come together as a community, hear from college leaders about matters of importance to Bates, and ask questions. We anticipate these will take place in November 2026 and March 2027.
• We will continue to extend guidance, grant support, and technical capacity for artificial intelligence (AI) for all who want or need to use this and other emerging technologies in their work.
• The Office of the Dean of the Faculty will be looking at multiple ways to better support faculty in their work, including issues related to promotion and tenure, the recognition and celebration of faculty research, and enhancing mentoring. 

Enrollment and Retention

We had great success in enrolling the Class of 2030 last year, but that doesn’t mean we can let up on the gas for 2026–27. Enrollment will remain an area of critical strategic focus and concerted effort as we work to build the Class of 2031. We will employ the same approach to enrollment that served us so well last year: intense and thoughtful work by our team in Admission and Student Financial Services, led by new Vice President for Enrollment and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Tori Neason Wallace, and active participation by colleagues across campus in yield efforts. 

This fall we welcome our first cohort of QuestBridge Scholars. We are thrilled that they are here at Bates, and look forward to a second cohort joining us in Fall 2027. We will focus this year on continuing to leverage the benefits of this exciting new partnership and ensure that QuestBridge students are well supported. 

We are also paying close attention to the federal attention and restrictions being placed on our international students, the shifting legal landscape in admission and financial aid, and the pressures these changes have created for all involved. This will continue to be an area for vigilance and response.

Finally, we will continue to seek ways to enhance the retention of all students through the implementation of ideas and strategies included in a recent report from the student retention and thriving working group. Early numbers suggest that we were quite successful in retaining students in the Class of 2029; we will now need to institutionalize strategies to ensure successful retention.

Branding

Since Spring 2026, we have been partnering with a branding agency to help us sharpen and better communicate the Bates brand in the increasingly competitive landscape of higher education. This firm, VIA, a national agency that is based in Maine, will make recommendations for ways that we can be clearer and stronger in articulating what makes Bates special. We will begin implementing some of these recommendations in the year ahead, but it will be a multi-year project, involving things like updates to the website, new signage for the campus, design guidelines, new themes and talking points for communications, and so forth. We’re not reinventing who we are as a college — we’re just trying to do the best possible job at telling the story of Bates and crafting a sharp identity in effective, memorable, and distinctive ways.

Athletics and Well-Being

Construction will continue throughout the year on the new Stoddard Fitness and Well-Being Center and renovation of Alumni Gym, and it will be exciting to watch this new facility come together before our very eyes. We hope to open in time for the 2027–28 basketball season. In the meantime, we will be working on developing staffing and programming for the center so that it can be effectively activated for use by all members of the college community. We will also continue to pay particular attention to the needs of those teams and colleagues most directly affected by the construction project, and seek to minimize the disruptive impact of the temporary relocation of offices, locker rooms, and competition venues. 

Higher Education Planning and Advocacy Beyond Bates

Higher education remains a source of political focus at the national level. And of course Bates, specifically, has recently had a moment in the media spotlight. We don’t have our heads in the sand about the implications for either political headwinds or pointed critique. Instead, especially on matters that concern all small liberal arts colleges or all of higher education, we are working with a host of partners to respond and uphold the value proposition of a college education — and to communicate the particular value of a Bates education.

Specifically, we are working actively with the American Council on Education, the Annapolis Group of Liberal Arts Colleges, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, and College Presidents for Civic Preparedness (a coalition run by the Institute of Citizens & Scholars), among other associations. Bates is not only engaged in but helping to define the national conversation around higher education. But these memberships and partnerships are just one way we tell the Bates story — each of you, in your own way, is a crucial ambassador for the college, the excellent educational experience we provide, and the powerful community we form together.

A Closing Word of Thanks

Thank you for being such wonderful ambassadors for Bates. Thank you for all that you give to enriching this community, contributing to the greater good, and preparing our students to meet the challenges and opportunities of coming times. There would be no Bates without each and every one of you — and for all you do, I am very grateful.

Warmly,
   Garry