Strategies for Goal Achievement

Goal 1: Enhance the faculty and develop our intellectual strengths

• Strategy 1: Develop a long-term plan for replacing distinguished faculty who will retire in the next five years.
• Strategy 2: Look intentionally, in each faculty search, for faculty who can enrich our strength in one or more of the intellectual areas we have identified as key for our intellectual leadership, and also be mindful that peaks of excellence are not static, as is evident from a comparison of our current strengths and those identified in the previous strategic plan. Truly intentional hiring will seek to balance our current strengths with the ever present need to diversify further our faculty in all ranks, and also to remain self-critical about our intellectual trajectory amid the complexities of a rapidly changing global culture.
• Strategy 3: Develop a clear rationale for the use of “practice of” appointments.
• Strategy 4: Implement “alternative course load” strategies to support our work with external constituencies.
• Strategy 5: Streamline the faculty’s committee responsibilities and provide additional support for research.
• Strategy 6: Cultivate the emerging leadership of younger faculty through mentoring and the creation of structured opportunities.
• Strategy 7: Strengthen our commitment to doctoral education, both through the shared Ph.D. program and through the new Th.D. program.

Goal 2: Strengthen our recruitment and formation of students

• Strategy 1: Strengthen our Admissions Office with more visible off-campus recruiting and a focus on the Th.D. program.
• Strategy 2: Develop new criteria for evaluating applications for admission, especially for our M.Div. program, to focus on capacities for leadership.
• Strategy 3: Improve our financial aid offerings.
• Strategy 4: Improve the ethnic diversity of the student body.
• Strategy 5: Improve our recruitment and formation of United Methodist students, and support and enrich the denominational diversity of Duke Divinity School.
• Strategy 6: Foster greater coherence and synergies among our programs of field education, spiritual formation, and the curriculum, focused especially on forming leaders for the church, the world, and the academy.

Goal 3: Sustain and develop the staff

• Strategy 1: Cultivate staff leadership.
• Strategy 2: Encourage participation of all employees in the school’s vision and mission.
• Strategy 3: Be attentive to the development needs of all employees.
• Strategy 4: Develop more structured arenas for the staff to develop collegial relationships and opportunities for cross-cutting collaborations.

Goal 4: Develop a major initiative focused on forming leaders

• Strategy 1: Implement and develop fully our recently approved Th.D. degree program.
• Strategy 2: Develop an initiative for Thriving Rural Communities that will be a national model for the role of the church in strengthening rural America.
• Strategy 3: Develop strategic partnerships that will advance leadership education for the church.
• Strategy 4: Continue to build models for formative education and offer them to wider audiences.
• Strategy 5: Develop, toward the end of this five-year strategic plan, a comprehensive national program for Christian leadership education.
• Strategy 6: Develop a communications plan for increasing our visibility in transformative leadership, especially through enhanced use of the Web and other information technology.

Goal 5: Cultivate the Wesleyan tradition

• Strategy 1: Strengthen scholarly contributions by nurturing synergies within the Divinity School faculty, offering leadership to Wesleyan scholars around the world, and enhancing the curriculum.
• Strategy 2: Become more intentional about recruiting and forming students for leadership in the Wesleyan tradition.
• Strategy 3: Offer programs designed to improve the quality of leadership within traditional United Methodist structures.
• Strategy 4: Identify and cultivate strategic partnerships to advance the Wesleyan tradition.

Goal 6: Advance key program initiatives in transformative leadership

• Strategy 1: Design a process to ensure that each program initiative is planning strategically each year.
• Strategy 2: Develop an ongoing structure for the interrelations of these projects with one another.
• Strategy 3: Adapt existing models of training, development, and formation for the needs of new constituents and on specific issues.
• Strategy 4: Enhance the leadership development of the people involved in the program initiatives themselves.
• Strategy 5: Ensure that these programmatic initiatives are linked to, and support, the intellectual work of the faculty and teaching in the classroom.
• Strategy 6: Cultivate synergies in programmatic initiatives by creative and compelling communication with external constituencies.

Goal 7: Contribute to, and enhance, Duke University emphases

• Strategy 1: Contribute to the undergraduate experience by offering courses, research opportunities, and international travel opportunities.
• Strategy 2: Enhance the translation of knowledge for the service of society through programmatic development as well as scholarly reflection on the intersections of knowledge and practice.
• Strategy 3: Strengthen the role of the arts by developing initiatives within the Divinity School as well as participating in, and hosting, events sponsored by the larger University.
• Strategy 4: Contribute to interdisciplinarity by building on our intellectual strengths in theology and health care, cultivating our partnership focused on the environment, deepening our connection to ethics initiatives, and initiating relationships related to reconciliation and leadership.
• Strategy 5: Strengthen the Divinity School’s internationalization as an integral feature of our own mission, as well as by participating in larger University strategies.
• Strategy 6: Enhance the Divinity School’s diversity, focusing especially on strengthening the presence of African Americans, while also enhancing the presence of Latino/a and Asian faculty, staff, and students.

Goal 8: Increase strategically our use of information technology

• Strategy 1: Design a plan for the optimal use of technology that serves our mission.
• Strategy 2: Invest in information technology staff.
• Strategy 3: Invest in new technology.
• Strategy 4: Utilize fully and maintain our current technology.
• Strategy 5: Integrate these enhanced uses of information technology into the school’s overall plans for communications.

Goal 9: Create long-term financial strength and stability

• Strategy 1: Develop a model for recalibrating the tuition that needs to be charged to Divinity School students, and the financial aid added to support those students, in order to enable the Divinity School to meet its core expenses for the future.
• Strategy 2: Enhance significantly our fund-raising for financial aid, both through enhanced annual fund giving and by exceeding our $10 million endowment goal in the Financial Aid Initiative.
• Strategy 3: Secure significant new funding in both expendable and endowment gifts for the core purposes of the Divinity School, including our major programmatic initiatives, endowed professorships, and other key activities of this strategic plan.
• Strategy 4: Manage the budget carefully for cost savings and synergies, while simultaneously looking for potential new revenue streams.

Financial Resources and Requests for University Support »