Nearly 75 community members braved the frigid temperatures to gather in Old Library’s Great Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 28 and hear about plans for Bryn Mawr’s future.
The lunch-time event featured an update from Bryn Mawr President Wendy Cadge on Bryn Mawr’s strategic direction—known as The Next Chapter—and a presentation by Kaveri Singh from DLR Group, the integrated design firm the College selected to partner with to develop its Comprehensive Campus Plan.
Cadge shared an early draft of the strategic direction document with the community in September 2025, inviting them to share ideas, suggestions, and feedback. That draft builds on two years of strategic planning work from 2022 to 2024 and 18 months of conversations, consultations, and surveys since Cadge arrived.
In discussing the strategic direction, Cadge pointed to the many factors impacting higher education now and in the future, including the expected drop in the college-age population, increased federal scrutiny and regulation, public skepticism about the value of higher education, and a widespread misunderstanding of the liberal arts model.
“As we think about this next chapter, we're trying to chart our own path, rather than have it charted for us by external entities,” Cadge said. “This planning will enable us to strengthen the College’s ability to chart our own destiny by aligning decisions, resources, and investments toward those factors most critical to institutional strength and reputation.”
Cadge said the strategic direction document identifies several institutional strengths that will be essential as Bryn Mawr responds to these shifting conditions. These include competitive financial aid, liberal arts majors aligned with student interests, robust support of student success and completion, and a compelling residential experience through our dorms, dining, and co-curricular programs.
The Next Chapter organizes the College’s efforts around five pillars:
- Redoubling our Commitment to Academic Excellence and Distinction
- Providing Holistic Student Support
- Advancing a Community Approach to Access and Inclusion
- Enhancing Visibility, Reputation and Impact
- Modernizing infrastructure, facilities and operating systems
The next phase in the strategic planning process will be for the College’s Board of Trustees to approve the strategic direction, which they’ll consider at their April meeting.
Following Cadge, Singh gave an update on where the creation of the Comprehensive Campus Plan stands.
“We’re at the end of the goal-setting phase right now, and the phase of data review, and we're starting to come up with the first, biggest, broadest, brightest ideas,” she said.
Throughout her presentation, Singh asked the audience a series of questions that they could answer on their cell phones, with responses appearing on a screen in real time.
These questions touched on enhancing the academic and student experiences and on what makes for an accessible, inclusive, and sustainable experience at Bryn Mawr.
DLR team members are currently on campus holding Concept Synthesis Workshops. Additional workshops are scheduled for February and April, and the plan will move to the Board of Trustees this spring.
The development of the strategic direction document and the Comprehensive Campus Plan has included conversations with hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and alumnae/i; community feedback on a number of draft documents; and a series of campus workshops and conversations. For the last 15 months, the planning has touched nearly every member of the on-campus community and every aspect of the College.