Together, Stronger, Goucher

Goucher College  |  2026-2029

Three-Year Strategic Plan

Goucher College has a proud 141-year history of embracing access, innovation, and a unique global perspective in higher education.

Over the past five years, the college made great progress as we introduced new high-growth majors, forged new partnerships, increased international enrollment, and began to build the Lewent Science Center.

Building on that growth, over the next three years, Goucher will invest in three key areas:

  1. Experience & Belonging
  2. Sustainability & Renewal
  3. Distinctiveness & Relevance

We are intentionally creating a community where every student, faculty member, and staff member can find their place and thrive. We are steadfastly committed to renewing and sustaining what’s next, including new partnerships, new majors, and new technologies, to position Goucher for the next generation of learners. Goucher is a college where curiosity can become our students’ calling and exploration can lead to direction.

Experience & Belonging

Community

Build on our success in delivering cohort-based programs that allow students to develop strong peer-to-peer support and friendships that contribute to a student’s ability to persist and graduate on time. Create a culture that prides itself on intentional faculty and staff engagement, sustained relationships, and a sense that each student is known and valued. All students should feel connected to their peers, invested in Goucher, and confident that their voices are heard and their contributions matter. Establish Goucher’s model of community as a distinctive institutional characteristic, recognized externally and experienced consistently by all students, faculty, and staff. Examples include:
  1. LAUNCH — Expand Goucher’s program designed specifically to assist low-income, first-generation students navigate the college experience to all first-gen students by fiscal year 2029 (FY29) while preserving the small cohort-based model that contributes to its success.
  2. Pathways — Fully implement Goucher’s new programs designed to provide neurodiverse students with the additional wrap-around services and support they need to succeed in FY27.
  3. Honors — Design and launch by FY28 Goucher’s program designed specifically for high-achieving students who want to be intellectually and academically challenged.
  4. Living/Learning Communities — Reimagine and launch by FY28 a completely redesigned special interest housing program at Goucher that more effectively engages students in a true living/learning community fostering an increased sense of belonging.
  5. Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program — Expand enrollment in the Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program by 150% by FY29 while maintaining or improving upon the program’s reputation.

Belonging

Commit to creating a culture of belonging in our students, our faculty, and our staff. Create opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to be recognized and appreciated, and for staff voices to be heard through a formal mechanism, in addition to faculty and students.
  1. Student Satisfaction — By the end of FY29, see a significant increase in the percentage of students annually reporting a strong sense of belonging compared to the current baseline, and placing Goucher at or above the median of its peer set, with no demographic subgroup more than 5% below the institutional average.
  2. Meaningful Evaluations — Starting with the introduction of annual performance evaluations in Workday across the college in FY27, implement a consistent staff performance and development process that connects clear role expectations, individual and team goals, meaningful performance feedback, and opportunities for professional development by FY29.
  3. Competitive Employee Compensation — By FY29, implement a phased approach to improving staff and faculty compensation competitiveness and internal equity across unionized and non-unionized faculty and staff, informed by market data and aligned with the college’s financial capacity.

Accountability

Establish a culture of service excellence across the college by streamlining processes, improving communication and responsiveness, leveraging technology and data, and fostering collaboration across departments to ensure that essential services are accessible, efficient, welcoming, and aligned with the evolving needs of the community.

Sustainability & Renewal

Partnerships

Successfully identify and implement by FY28 one or more transformative partnerships that will position Goucher for long-term reputational and financial success.

Facilities Renewal

Improve student and employee satisfaction by systematically upgrading campus facilities within the constraints of a limited capital budget, prioritizing work that delivers the greatest impact per dollar spent. Specific initiatives will include:

  1. Residence Halls — Raise the baseline standard of residential housing to be competitive with peer institutions and improve student quality of life and year-round comfort by FY29.
  2. Accessibility — Advance campus accessibility initiatives to strengthen the institution’s capacity to become a truly inclusive community that welcomes students of all ages. Complete a campus-wide accessibility audit in FY27 to identify and prioritize non-compliant spaces, sequencing corrections by severity and by traffic volume and addressing the most-used and highest-risk areas first.
  3. Sustainability — Meet the energy-savings targets specified in Goucher’s Clean Energy Master Plan and put us on a path to becoming a net zero greenhouse gas campus by 2035. Implement phased upgrades and replacement of outdated equipment with energy-efficiency retrofits that reduce long-term operating costs and take advantage of efficiency-linked funding.
  4. Third Spaces — Invest in identifying and renewing “third spaces” by FY28 to promote informal community connections between students, staff, and faculty.
  5. Performing Arts — Renovate Goucher College’s Performing Arts Center, including Kraushaar Auditorium, Merrick Lecture & Recital Hall, and the Rosenberg Lobby & Art Gallery, by FY29 to better support our performing and visual arts programs as well as enable Events & Conference Services to drive increased revenue for the college.

New Programs

Introduce several new undergraduate majors and graduate programs in high-growth disciplines, including new graduate programs in education and partnering with Whiting-Turner to develop and launch by FY28 a distinctive, interdisciplinary undergraduate major that prepares Goucher graduates for careers in construction management.

Lifelong Learning

Launch a new portfolio of online, in-person, and study abroad lifelong learning programs in FY28 to meet the needs of the residents of the Edenwald Senior Living University Retirement Community, our alumnae/i, and other retirees, with a goal of serving more than 350 new students by the end of FY29.

Ethical AI

Successfully launch the new student information system (Workday Student) in FY27, and then, building upon that foundation, develop a comprehensive strategy and framework for the ethical, transparent, and pedagogically sound integration of AI across relevant academic programs and all campus administrative operations in FY28.

Transfer Students

Building on the success of the Strategic Transfer Excellence Plan (STEP) and our existing partnerships with Maryland community colleges, place a specific focus on increasing our incoming transfer student population starting in FY27 with the goal of transfer students comprising 15% of our annual incoming class by FY29.

Distinctiveness & Relevance

 A Renewed “Goucher Commons”

Refine our first-year and second-year undergraduate curriculum to provide all students with the habits of mind and transferable skills they need to succeed in life. This includes:
  1. Complex Problem Exploration (CPE) Courses — With the support of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, redesign and implement a new team-taught, interdisciplinary approach to delivering Complex Problem Exploration (CPE) courses by FY28.
  2. Designing Your Career and Life — In FY27, pilot a foundation-level course intended to help students define their life goals and the steps necessary to achieve those goals through a broad humanistic framework.

Experiential Education

Make experiential education a centerpiece of Goucher’s distinctiveness and identity, based upon the philosophy that when present in multiple forms across the curriculum it helps to develop the human-centered skills that our graduating students will need to succeed in life. Examples include:

  1. Study Abroad — By FY28, in partnership with ISEP, design and implement new study-abroad pathways that expand opportunities for historically underrepresented student cohorts (e.g., LAUNCH, student-athletes, pre-health, entrepreneurship) and that lead students to report high levels of alignment with their academic and career interests.
  2. Work-Based Learning — By FY28, offer a broad range of work-based learning opportunities (e.g., job shadows, service learning, student employment, micro-internships) tied to reflection that reinforces the development of relevant career competencies and develops a greater connection to our off-campus community.

Career Outcomes

Increase our focus on providing both the foundational skills and defined pathways that will enable Goucher students to secure financially rewarding and satisfying employment post-graduation. Examples include:
  1. Internships — Ensure that by FY28 all our students have access to a good quality paid or credit-bearing internship in their desired field of study prior to graduating.
  2. Post-Graduation Employment — Connect rigorous academic engagement to post-Goucher careers by engaging alumnae/i and community partners in creating, across our breadth of offerings, visible and achievable pathways to fulfilling employment after graduation. By the end of FY28, develop new instruments for assessing how the Goucher experience supports graduates’ career journeys at one, five, and ten years after graduation.
  3. Student Satisfaction — By the end of FY28, develop new instruments for assessing how the Goucher experience supports graduates’ career journeys at one, five, and ten years after graduation.

Identity

Translate the Goucher experience into a clear, differentiated market position that defines what makes Goucher unmistakably unique, emphasizing strong relationships and multifaceted academics. To that end:
  1. Student Needs — Develop redesigned brand messaging in FY27 that positions Goucher to speak to the needs and wants of today’s student.
  2. Global Changemaker — Articulate and communicate in FY28 Goucher’s identity as a global changemaker by connecting global learning, civic engagement, and real-world experience into a lived, distinctive expression of institutional purpose.
  3. Student Journey — Communicate Goucher’s identity at every stage of the student’s journey—from first encounter through life after graduation—ensuring that the institution is known for turning curiosity into calling and exploration into direction.
  4. Marketing Campaign — Make a substantial investment in marketing to get Goucher’s message out with the goal of seeing transformative growth in the number of students in the incoming classes of FY28 and FY29.
View the Strategic Plan PDF