A Planning Program for Worcester Polytechnic Institute: The Future of Two Towers - Part One

SUMMARY

During the past three months the President's Planning Group has developed a planning procedure for the college, assembled a list of possible objectives, devised a set of criteria for evaluation of objective and initiated an evaluation process.

The Planning Group recommends that by 30 June, 1970, WPI firmly commit itself to a single objective and establish effective quality control procedures in both the administrative decision-making process and in the faculty structure in order to ensure achievement of that objective. To this end a planning schedule is recommended with target dates: (1) completion of the listing and preliminary evaluation of suggested objectives by 30 June, 1969; (2) selection from the list those three or four objectives (or combinations of objectives) which seem most appropriate by 1 September 1969; (3) completion of a thorough analysis of requirements (financial, faculty, curricular, staff) for the selected objectives by 1 March, 1970; (4) selection of the final objective by 30 June, 1970.

In order to evaluate any chosen objective or combination of objectives, the present status and resources of the college must be known and a set of criteria must be established. A partial analysis of the present status is given in Part II. Summaries of most of the objectives so far suggested and detailed discussions of four of them are given in Part III.