Carleton College is among the premier liberal arts colleges in the nation. Our strengths range from our talented and intellectually able students and our dedicated faculty and staff, to our loyal and supportive alumni and friends. Our Board of Trustees has provided consistently wise stewardship of the College's mission. The accomplishments of our alumni, personally, professionally, and as members of society, make a powerful statement about the contributions that Carleton has made as a leader in liberal higher education.

But there is something more to Carleton, something less tangible that has remained at the heart of the institution for many decades. This was brought into focus in a recent alumni survey summarized by President Lewis in the Winter 1996-97 Voice: "...we asked them to indicate the most important features that define a Carleton education. From more than a dozen possible choices, a majority of alumni in every decade-from the 1920s to the 1990s-named the same three things: the character and quality of our students, the quality of our faculty, and our commitment to a liberal arts mission."

We need to look still deeper to understand fully what is so special about the Carleton experience. Other schools have excellent students, dedicated faculty and staff, fine facilities, and a strong resource base. We believe Carleton has created a distinctive atmosphere of learning and discovery that permeates the campus. Not only are our students bright and talented, but they possess a refreshingly open and engaging intellectual curiosity. Their strong internal motivation is coupled with tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and a highly collaborative spirit of mutual discovery. Our faculty has created a learning environment that capitalizes on these assets. Without sacrificing rigor, they have fostered an active, participatory, student-centered culture of exploration and intellectual excitement. Learning, even serious learning, can be fun.

From all our discussions during this past year, we are convinced that Carleton should reaffirm its basic liberal arts characteristics. We should remain a small, coeducational, residential, non-sectarian, liberal arts college. The number of students enrolled in Northfield, excluding those on off-campus seminars, should remain around 1700 and our constituency should continue to be traditional college-age young adults 18 to 22
years old.

Clarity of purpose and affirmation of our basic characteristics help to sharpen our focus on the challenges of the next decade. But we also need to ask whether we can afford to remain committed to our traditional mission at a time of extraordinary change both inside and outside higher education. We believe we can! In fact, schools such as Carleton, with considerable financial strength, excellent academic reputations, and a clear sense of purpose, may be entering a period during which they have a unique opportunity to distinguish themselves from other institutions of higher education. Current external pressures on higher education and the rapid changes taking place in our country and around the world do not undermine the basic worth of a sound liberal education. There are growing indications that the areas in which liberal education excels, such as continuous learning, intellectual curiosity, analytical and problem-solving skills, adaptability, breadth of knowledge, ability to work in teams as well as independently, and communication skills, are exactly the qualities being valued more and more by employers of college graduates. The need for young people to develop a sense of civic duty, strong values, and ethical standards built on broad experience and understanding is as great now as it has ever been. The challenges ahead of us, therefore, involve finding successful strategies for enhancing Carleton's excellence and position among the top rank of liberal arts colleges, rather than transforming the mission of the College.

In order for Carleton to address successfully these challenges and continue to provide a superior liberal education, we must pay attention to a few fundamentals: 1) the quality of our human resources (students, faculty, staff, alumni); 2) the quality of student learning, both academic and extracurricular; 3) the quality of the interaction and communication among people; and 4) the quality of our physical environment as it relates to our ability to carry out our jobs. In the body of the report, we summarize the importance of each of these elements, identify areas we believe require attention, and make recommendations for action.