Lafayette College’s most recent strategic plan was unanimously approved by the Board of Trustees last December. The plan was approved without faculty endorsement, a move cited in the rationale of a no-confidence motion against college President Nicole Hurd’s leadership passed by the faculty on Tuesday.
In a community-wide email signed by Hurd and Board of Trustees Chairman Bob Sell ‘84, the pair announced the board’s approval of the plan and expressed confidence that it would “deliver on the highest aspirations we all share for the College.”
The plan was unanimously approved by Student Government and the Alumni Association Board, and received a 244-3 staff vote, but failed to receive a faculty endorsement in a 66-73 split, with 12 abstentions.
The Board of Trustees’ resolution on the plan states that the issues raised by the faculty “can and will be addressed during the implementation of the Strategic Plan in a process that will respect Lafayette’s tradition of shared governance.”
Hurd and Sell declined to comment further. Several members of the strategic plan steering committee and working groups declined to comment on the plan’s lack of faculty endorsement.
“I think the response of the board and the president is shocking,” said religious studies professor Robert Blunt, a signatory of both the motion that prompted the faculty vote on the plan and the later no-confidence motion.
Blunt said that the community-wide email announcing the plan’s approval was a “misrepresentation” of the rejection of faculty endorsement as a split vote and that this violated “the very principles of shared governance.”
The email states that the “faculty vote on a motion to endorse the priorities and goals resulted in a split 66-73 vote, with 12 abstentions.”
Shared governance, according to the faculty handbook, “recognizes the mutual independence and the unique expertise of different College constituencies” to then combine these voices into a “single voice that speaks for the College as a whole.”
“There is no single process or no one right way to do this,” said Julie Wollman, a professor of practice for the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and the president emerita of Widener University, of strategic plan development.
“It’s more about the culture of the institution and how the leader wants to operate,” she continued. She added that she believes it is important to have different constituents of the college engaged to contribute meaningfully to enacting a project like a strategic plan.
Faculty controversy over the strategic plan was not limited to its endorsements. Last March, the final draft of the college’s mission and values statement was withdrawn after the faculty admonished its equation of academic priorities with athletics. A revised draft of the statement was approved by faculty a month later and finalized by the Board of Trustees in August.
Chelsea Morrese, the director of the Landis Center for Community Engagement and a strategic plan steering committee member, said that while she believes it was a challenge to be representative and inclusive of the entire campus community, the group succeeded in that.
“If it wasn’t hard, we weren’t doing it right,” she said.
Other members of the steering committee have also touted the plan’s inclusivity. A lack of inclusion in the planning process was cited as an argument against faculty endorsement of the strategic plan during the discussion of the motion.
Several other employees of the college — both on and off strategic plan working groups — declined to comment.
Jenn Rossmann, a mechanical engineering professor and co-chair of the “Learning at Lafayette” working group, described the plan as “holistic” and “attentive to the whole College” in an email, emphasizing her excitement for its support of interdisciplinary programs.
Kate SantaMaria ‘27 attended a virtual listening session in October. She recalled that she was the only student of a little over 10 people present.
She said that she was “happy to see a plan in the works” for making campus buildings more accessible and improving diversity within faculty and staff, but was concerned over the plan’s feasibility and timeline for implementation.
Former Student Government President Thania Hernandez ‘25, who led the organization during its approval of the plan and was on the “Enriching Student Life at Lafayette” working group, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“The Alumni Association Board and its four councils, after careful review of the plan, are excited about this strategy because it advances the mission and values of our alma mater and provides an architecture and a structure for the future of the College,” wrote Fran Della Badia, the president of the Alumni Board Association, in an email. She later noted that the “engaged learning” and “institutional excellence” aspects of the plan specifically resonated with alumni.
The strategic planning process also coincided with the formation of a campus master plan, the college’s first in seven years.
Delicia Nahman, the director of the Office of Sustainability and member of the “The Lafayette Campus” working group, said that there were “intentional discussions” about the parallel timelines of the plan within the group.
Nicole Eramo, Hurd’s chief of staff and a member of the Feasibility and Implementation Committee, wrote in an email that a new strategic planning website will be launched soon to update progress.
“At this stage, each of the senior leaders is working with their teams and divisions to discuss the priorities and goals and how they may be enacted with the appropriate metrics and milestones,” Eramo wrote.
The planning process for “Becoming Lafayette: A Vision for Our Third Century” began in spring of 2023 with a schedule of four phases before being presented for endorsements and approval. It is the college’s first strategic plan since 2007, other than a strategic direction in 2016.
