The OWU Strategic Plan

Introduction

Ohio Wesleyan University has an extraordinary opportunity for advancement as one of America’s premier liberal arts colleges. This opportunity is grounded in a vision for 21st century liberal education that enriches the life-changing education offered to OWU students. Fulfillment of this vision requires a significant investment, including intellectual capital and innovative curricular and co-curricular initiatives by the OWU faculty and staff, and philanthropic capital by alumni and friends who share an appreciation for OWU and aspirations for its future. This document provides a roadmap for fulfilling the vision and invites investors to participate in bringing the vision to life.

Building on a heritage of academic strength with a commitment to the liberal arts grounded in “practical idealism,” Ohio Wesleyan University will enhance its position as a national exemplar of liberal education. The faculty of Ohio Wesleyan University is augmenting the curriculum to ensure that each student has the opportunity to complement the rigor of the OWU classroom with a series of engaged learning experiences beyond the walls of the classroom and the borders of the campus. This curricular enhancement will encourage students to move from theory to practice and will give particular emphasis to substantially increased opportunities for international exposure as part of an OWU education. These experiences will be accomplished through a series of curricular innovations, including new courses, seminars, tutorials, and individually designed experiences that connect theory and practice. Additionally, an equally robust array of co-curricular innovations, including a new commitment to learning communities in residential life and increased off-campus service learning, will ensure that students gain the full benefit of an education that blends the classroom and the world, the curricular and the co-curricular, the theoretical and the practical. Through this process, OWU embraces its historic commitment to Education for Leadership and Service by dedicating itself anew to a transformational educational experience that prepares a new generation of leaders for an increasingly complex and interdependent world.

Ohio Wesleyan University will fulfill this vision with initiatives that strengthen the academic program, enhance student growth and development, increase enrollment of the most able students, develop campus facilities, and build a resource base to secure OWU’s place of leadership for the future. The University has set specific objectives and concrete action steps against which it will measure progress in the fulfillment of this vision.