Our Bold Vision
Through the goals of this strategic plan, Assumption University outlines an inspiring roadmap, anchored in our steadfast commitment to providing a distinctively Assumptionist Catholic liberal education to all those who seek it.
Embracing a dynamic and forward-thinking approach, Thrive charts a course for excellence. We will position our community to prosper, despite the challenges facing higher education generally and Catholic liberal education specifically.
This plan is bold because our future as an institution demands boldness; we need bold thinking, ambitious goals, and measurable action items to succeed. You can read more about the three visions of the strategic plan and each of their specific goals and action items below.
We will instill a unified understanding of Assumption’s distinctive Catholic liberal arts education across academics, student life, and operations.
We will make all decisions based on what is ultimately best for the student, rather than what is easiest for the institution.
We will increase access by growing enrollments, philanthropic support, and revenue streams to establish sustainable excellence.
Thrive charts a course for excellence
In our next decade, Assumption University will become a premier institution with national reach, not merely a Catholic university but a particular type of Catholic university—one in diminishing supply but, because it speaks to enduring human needs, persistent demand. We will become known as a Catholic university that defines its Catholic identity in terms of the education we offer—an education that welcomes and speaks to all who seek to pursue truth in the company of friends. It is animated by a particular tradition of inquiry while speaking to people of all backgrounds and beliefs. Thrive places a stake in the ground that both embraces the enduring education we offer and nimbly adapts to changing student, economic, and social needs.
Many liberal arts institutions are reacting to the pressures they face differently, by chasing the latest trends and becoming more like one another. Amid economic headwinds and pressure to deliver near-term return on investment, these institutions are making stark choices: either to retreat into the enduring ideas that help form students for meaningful lives or to jettison those in favor of technical career preparation alone. Yet either of those options, in isolation, is doomed to fail. The result is to erase anything that makes Catholic liberal education distinctive and convert it to a commodity instead, one anyone can offer and no one can distinguish. Those institutions will fall because they will compete on price and short-term outcomes alone. Meaningful lives include rewarding work. And institutions that focus on technical preparation without integrating enduring ideas into it prepare students only until the inevitable and rapid moment when technology or the employment market changes.
In sum: Assumption University chooses growth by distinction rather than extinction by emulation. We choose to stand. We choose to rise. We choose to thrive.
Greg Weiner, Ph.D.
President