Building on Tradition, Ensuring Transformation

Wheaton College stands poised at a major milestone. Buoyed by a tradition of innovation, the college begins its next phase with new leadership, an expanded charter, and a renewed commitment to growth and transformation.

Upon taking office in January 2022, President Michaele Whelan engaged the college community in a focused and inclusive process of reflection on Wheaton’s existing strengths and a collective imagining of its future. These strategic conversations involved every member of the faculty and staff in small group discussions, as well as students, the Board of Trustees and the college’s alumni volunteer leaders.

Following a year’s worth of collective reflection, the college community has refined and affirmed its educational mission, renewed its vision of an innovative, intellectually rigorous and practical liberal arts education, and set forth a series of strategic principles and priorities aligned to its shared goals. Taken together, they outline a bold plan to build on Wheaton’s rich tradition while embracing transformations designed to preserve the college’s vitality for future generations.

Mission

Wheaton College provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an equitable and just world.

Vision Statement

Wheaton educates students for purposeful, abundant lives and evolving careers.

Essential Elements

  • Creating a student-centered, action-oriented environment with a shared and sustained sense of belonging
  • Fostering students’ skills, habits of mind, and confidence to make meaningful differences in the world
  • Maintaining high standards of academic excellence, ethical integrity, intellectual freedom
  • Providing an innovative and flexible liberal arts curriculum embedded in experiential learning to ensure a transformative education
  • Empowering all faculty and staff to shape a diverse and inclusive community
  • Engaging alums in mentoring and career design within a lifelong network of support and connection