The Forging the Future, Preserving the Past campaign brought CRMS into the 21st Century. Now that we are here, what does the future hold? And, what must be done to provide today’s—and tomorrow’s—students with an authentic educational experience that will serve them as the future unfolds?
As we approach the 70th anniversary of our learning community, CRMS is faced with a rapidly changing educational landscape framed within a global context. The world that CRMS students and faculty experience today are often described as being “VUCA”: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. CRMS has a history of visionary leadership within the educational landscape and Forging the Future, Preserving the Past helped carry that tradition forward to the present. Yet, in order for a CRMS education to prepare students for this VUCA world, we’re approaching the time when the work must begin to enhance the campus and its programs.
In 2018, the CRMS Board of Trustees created a committee to imagine the next 10, 20, even 50 years of the school, and the path that students will need to follow in the future. Called Future Path, the process--less a strategic plan and more of a framework for the school’s continued evolution--explored key topics, including:
- What educational experiences will future graduates rely upon in adulthood?
- What is the path a CRMS graduate travels that prepares them for a complex and rapidly changing world?
The trustee committee completed its work on Future Path in the 20-21 academic year, producing a vision for the evolution of CRMS educational traditions over the next 20-30 years.
In this vision, a CRMS education provides experiences, programs, and spaces that facilitate connections—between individual study and collaboration, between different disciplines, and between students, faculty, and outside people and organizations. These connections link to the school’s core values, which we believe are not just relevant, but central, to a fruitful life in the future.
In this vision, students experience a rigorous academic program that pushes them to realize their capabilities, knowing that they have the support of their teachers and that these relationships have been nurtured throughout a broad spectrum of experiences and programs.
In this vision, the path to connection spans the entire curricula (academic, active, and community life) and emphasizes personal reflection and engagement in the community emphasizing plurality and inclusion.
The Future Path process revealed areas of needed investment that CRMS must make for the benefit of the next generation of students, faculty, and their families. These areas of need will form the basis of the next CRMS capital campaign.