Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026 marked the ninth weekly session of Franklin & Marshall’s 19th Diplomatic Congress.
The meeting began with the regularly scheduled “Guest Speakers” portion where they welcomed Professor Gretchen Meyers of the Classics Department who, in January, was appointed Associate Provost for Institutional Planning and Strategy. Meyers spoke about her work crafting the college’s next strategic plan alongside President Andrew Rich, as the current five-year plan comes to a close in 2027.
Rich, she explained, has crafted his own vision for the campus, which a committee for strategic planning is now taking in outline form and aligning with the college’s mission and values. This committee’s task is to articulate that vision in “high-level” strategic terms first, answering what the college does to accomplish it before moving on to more detailed specifics and timeframes. According to Meyers, the landscape of higher education is ever-changing, and a plan too granular risks becoming out of date. “This plan is about meeting the moment,” she said, offering a strategic direction, rather than checkboxes and timeframes so that the college, from there, can adapt.
This, Meyers admitted, was the shortcoming of the old plan, titled “L&AD: Leveraging Excellence, Accelerating Discovery,” which had no space to adapt and change. Without a clear priority, she argued, everything becomes a priority, and the plan turns into a to-do list rather than a strategy. Adding to Meyer’s remarks, Ibrahim Bin Amjad, President of the Diplomatic Congress, told the General Assembly “you get to decide what F&M looks like.”
Meyers then laid out the next steps: In November, the committee will go through feedback and recommendations before returning with a final draft to be shared with the campus community. The plan will, per F&M traditions, receive endorsements from the faculty after a vote, followed by final approval from the Board of Trustees. Once approved, an action plan will turn the strategy into practice with every Vice President being responsible for their own respective area’s plan, and thus, metrics and milestones. Progress will be shared with the campus at the end of each academic year in the form of a report. Meyers stressed the importance of setting standards and holding people accountable, saying “talking about ideas without action does not get the needle moving.”
Members of the Assembly then got the chance to raise their concerns and ask Meyers questions. When asked how F&M will reach students who do not consider liberal arts colleges, as well as how it is addressing affordability, she gestured to the college’s Commonwealth Commitment. She also mentioned how the strategic plan will ready the college to start its next fundraising campaign, following the $200 million campaign launched in 2018, “Now to Next,” by preparing metrics, targeting donors and fundraising structures.
Georgia Scherer ‘27, the Congress’ Parliamentarian, raised concerns about the plan’s language, including the use of “thrive and succeed” as seeming synonyms, as well as other inconsistencies. She then raised a very well received alternative, “enroll-enrich-engage-ensure,” which Meyers also responded very positively to, prompting any members of the GA to contribute by directing their suggestions towards the President of the Congress, who also sits on the committee.
Lastly, on the topic of ensuring students’ success after F&M, raising graduates’ competitiveness within different markets and F&M’s engagement with its alumni network, Meyers pointed to the Center for Career and Professional Development. She discussed how the Center’s different priorities, such as increasing graduate school applications’ competitiveness, should be embedded into their action plan, and used that as an example of how different departments and sectors of the college can operationalize the strategic plan. She went on to talk about the college’s initiative to “connect and reconnect” Diplomats, firstly through the “HireDiplomats” program, then through alumni councils and groups, and by expanding current ones and bringing them to where alumni are.
Meyers closed out by responding to a concern that the F&M bureaucratic bodies don’t work together by saying she believes this strategic plan would cause members of different offices within the college to “look up” and start caring more by opening up avenues for dialogue, rather than working in silos.
Sally Badoud, the Vice President for Communications and Marketing, was then invited to speak, beginning with praise for the F&M Theatre’s fall semester production of “Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really.” She then went on to speak about why she was there, providing an update on the college’s website, which she bluntly called “terrible.” Though the college updated its color palette at the start of the summer, the current site still displays purple and yellow, which are no longer part of that palette. A cosmetic glow up of the current site is expected to go live on Friday, Oct. 30th and will hold until a full redesign.
Badoud shared six moodboards from a Rhode Island-based design firm, iFactory, for the General Assembly to receive votes and feedback, with the project poised to move forward the following Tuesday. The new website, Badoud said, will be designed with prospective students in mind.
The meeting concluded with the regularly scheduled officer reports and events, eventually adjourning at 9:20 p.m.
Sophomore Andy Ha is a Staff Writer. Their email is aha@fandm.edu.