Monthly Letter to Faculty: November 2024

November 22, 2024

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Our collective vision for Wake Forest’s next ten years, “Framing Our Future,” unites us in the serious work of developing our students as whole people and teaching them how to think well and contribute to human flourishing in the spirit of Pro Humanitate. Our academic aspirations cross all disciplines and fields in pursuit of new research, knowledge, and perspectives that contribute to the common good. 

Following the completion of the strategic framework last year, each of the deans has led an equally important strategic framing process within their academic units. This means that more than 800 faculty have documented their shared ambitions for all of  our academic communities.    

As President Wente stated in her Annual Presidential Address last week, the transformative teaching and path-breaking scholarship we deliver, coupled with our intention to make a positive impact in the world, defines our University. Our worthy ambitions outlined in our strategic frameworks guide our collective steps toward being an even better institution. But how are we going about translating our vision into action? What in fact are our next steps beyond the creation of these frameworks? 

Much groundwork has been laid already. While the College and the Schools have been drafting their plans, the Provost’s and President’s Offices have put together working groups to delve into university-wide initiatives. Here are some examples of the significant progress we have made to date: 

Community of Learning 

• Campus Life completed its strategic vision last year and has been implementing sectors of it ever since, including “The Forest” a collaboration with the College to enhance first year undergraduate belonging. 
• A working group on Lifelong Learning for Alumni established its action plan and created a dynamic website with Wake-based resources. 
• The Office of Online Education in collaboration with the Online Education Executive Committee led an effort to create a strategic framework for online graduate programs that will be reviewed by the deans and the Provost’s Office soon. 
• Last year’s selection process for the SACSCOC Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) identified greater institutional support for experiential learning as our number one shared priority; the completion of the QEP this coming year will represent the first big step toward realizing a Wake Forest Center for Experiential Learning.  

Community of Inquiry 

• This academic year a cross-school working group has drafted a freedom of expression statement to share across the university for feedback this spring, with the understanding that freedom of speech and academic freedom are bedrock principles at Wake Forest.
• The Neuroscience and Society working group charted next steps to launch the search for a Boswell Presidential Endowed Chair in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience and propose an interdisciplinary Neuroscience major. 
• Wake Forest joined The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization, giving faculty the opportunity to convey informed perspectives rooted in their scholarship. This work helps spread Wake Forest’s reputation for academic excellence while supporting the common good.

Community of Partnerships 

• The President has launched an initiative to develop enterprise-wide opportunities in Charlotte; it will include the exploration of new academic programs by the deans and their faculty. 
• Wake Forest, in partnership with Carter and Front Street Capital and the City of Winston-Salem, has shared conceptual plans for “The Grounds,” underscoring  the university’s role as a leading collaborator in Winston-Salem’s economic development.  

This past Tuesday at “How Wake Works,” EVP and CFO Jackie Travisano and I, along with our teams and consultants Ayers Saint Gross, rolled out the Comprehensive Space Planning process that will allow us to match our aspirations for academic excellence with our space needs. 

Funding for all of these initiatives will be coming from multiple sources. President Wente allocated $1 million for strategic framing initiatives for this academic year, and we anticipate more allocations in subsequent years. The first round of Strategic Framework awards was shared yesterday. In addition, in some cases, the provost and deans will be reallocating funds. In others, we will look to granting agencies, foundations and corporations for new support and partnerships. For our more ambitious initiatives, we will work closely with the Office of Advancement in the upcoming Capital Campaign.   

Some of our most exciting strategic framework possibilities center on our academic areas of distinction. Across the College and the Schools we have specific areas of expertise that we can better leverage to create new partnerships within and beyond Wake Forest. Across the next calendar year we will launch strategic conversations with faculty around each of the five areas of distinction we have named in “Framing Our Future,” along with the Center for Experiential Learning. 

• Neuroscience and Society (spring launch) 
• Environment and Sustainability  (spring launch) 
• Leadership, Character and Integrity  (spring launch) 
• Health, Medicine, and Humanity (summer launch)
• Emerging and Future Technologies (summer launch)
• Center for Experiential Learning (fall launch)

These groups will bring together a wide range of our academic specialists to capture the broadest dimensions of each academic area. The goal is to identify exciting opportunities for shared cross-disciplinary, cross-school initiatives that capture the compelling problems that drive this work, and the unique strengths Wake Forest expertise can bring to bear on finding potential solutions. After developing our strategic ambition in an area of academic distinction, we will identify critical next steps and the sources of support needed for implementation. 

Wake Forest is uniquely positioned to do this path breaking work. First and foremost, we have extraordinary teacher-scholars. We also have experience facilitating interdisciplinary and cross-school partnerships. We have talented, smart students, undergraduate and graduate and professional students alike, to do this work with us.  By inviting them into that work, for which we have a great track record already, we ensure their intellectual and personal growth.

This spring semester we will invite faculty invested in Neuroscience and Society and in Environment and Sustainability to engage in big picture thinking. Invitations to the strategic visioning work for the other areas of distinction will follow later in the year. It is our hope that these sessions will be, as Plutarch wrote long ago, “the lighting of a fire” that takes Wake Forest to new heights of academic excellence and Pro Humanitate. 

We hope you are inspired to engage deeply in our strategic framework vision, and as always we invite you to share your questions and thoughts at AsktheProvost@wfu.edu.  

In gratitude for all you do for Wake Forest, and wishing you a happy Thanksgiving,

Michele