FOREWORD
FOREWORD The PLU 2020 long-range planning report, like its predecessor documents, PLU 2000 and PLU 2010, has been three years in the making. Quite literally hundreds of members of the Pacific Lutheran University community have contributed to its creation: members of the Long-Range Planning Committee, Task Force and Study Group members, the authors and co-authors of various “topic papers” and reports, campus forum leaders and participants, readers and reviewers. So it can be fairly claimed that this report is both a statement “of and by the PLU community” and that it “belongs to the PLU community.” As such, the key directions and recommendations of the report enjoy broad support and provide a powerful platform for the next stage of PLU’s growth and development.
PLU 2020 calls on the campus community to build a university for the future, where faculty, staff and students share a vocational calling to learning and to teaching.
During the course of campus conversations regarding the university’s long-range prospects, four key themes gradually emerged which are now embedded throughout PLU 2020. They are the affirmation of mission and identity, confidence that the university is well positioned to meet coming challenges and opportunities, a commitment to remain a community with a shared calling to teaching and learning, and a relentless aspiration to excellence. Affirmation. PLU 2020 is an affirmation of the university’s mission and the expression of its identity and self-understanding as a Lutheran university in the Pacific Northwest, of an educational program that is grounded in the liberal arts and expressed in the pathways to academic distinction, and of a vocation-centered understanding of education that transforms lives as students prepare to both succeed and serve others in the world. These affirmations guide and inform all that the campus community does. They also are motivational, calling the university toward a larger and ever more compelling vision of its vocation, meaning and purpose. Confidence. PLU’s calling is to be confident, adventuresome and bold in preparing for and responding to a decade ahead that will be filled with change, challenge and opportunity. PLU 2020 foresees the time when demographic, technological and economic forces, as well as changes in student preparation and marketplace expectations will transform the landscape for all colleges and universities. PLU is well-positioned to navigate a course ahead, building on significant
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