Sustain Regional Leadership in the Community Professions
Enhance & Deepen the Undergraduate Experience
Create Purposeful Community Partnerships
Enhance and Deepen the Undergraduate Experience
”By building a comprehensive varsity sports program, we are expanding educational opportunities for new populations of students, while instilling key skills for leadership, service and collaboration and fostering a remarkable school spirit.
Community-Oriented
LEADERSHIP
Education and development of the whole person is a core value, guiding charism, and distinctive element of the Anna Maria undergraduate experience. Transformation into professional leaders and responsible individuals takes place regularly and systematically during each student’s learning journey: in our classrooms, through student organizations and clubs, in our residence halls, on our playing fields and courts, and in the local community. The Something Greater Strategic Plan invests significantly in proven strategies to engage students more broadly and deeply in a close-knit campus culture of active learning, character formation, and caring mentorship.
Preparing community-oriented leaders is a distinguishing hallmark of an Anna Maria education. All our students gain essential leadership talents, while honing their personal leadership styles:
- The capacity for empathy, fostered by a climate of diversity and exposure to new cultures.
- The capability to solve problems collaboratively, intelligently, and creatively.
- The power to motivate and inspire, through strong organizational and communications skills and a passion for purpose.
- The ability to get things done, by demonstrating a strong work ethic to perform on what they learn.
Living-Learning Undergraduate Communities
Develop living-learning communities in the College’s residence halls that bring together undergraduates with similar professional, co-curricular, and service and volunteer interests. Create and deliver affinity-oriented programming around each group’s interests that expands upon the academic curriculum and provides opportunities for civic engagement, volunteering, spiritual growth, health and wellness, cultural exposure, global awareness, collaboration, and other areas of personal development and competence.
Individual Student Success and Achievement
Design and offer a First-Year Experience Program for all incoming first-year undergraduates that orients them to the College; individually assess and guides them in selecting co-curricular activities, organizations, and clubs; teaches academic and professional success techniques; promotes a common thread linked to the first-year general education curriculum; and fosters personal acclimation, engagement, and school spirit. Monitor improvements to student academic success, satisfaction, and retention.
Co-Curricular, Residential, and Commuter Engagement
Grow the number and variety of student activities, organizations, and clubs around students’ demonstrated interests. Enhance the College’s service-learning and community service programs, partners, and locations, including service-based coursework and summer fellowships. Introduce an annual speakers’ series. Design and implement a comprehensive engagement strategy for commuter students and address dining, parking, and other logistical needs.
On-Campus Resources and Auxiliary Services
Invest in on-campus resources particularly around dining, retail and bookstore, internal communication technologies, common and small-group spaces, parking, and other services related to an outstanding undergraduate experience.
Advising, Counseling, and Career Student Athletic Success and College Pride
Build the College’s varsity and club sports programs for student engagement and development, optimal roster sizes, competitiveness, and enhanced school pride. Selectively add sports around demonstrated student interests.
