The college hosted two workshops last week, where a total of 70 faculty, staff and students brainstormed ways to modify the mission and vision statements of Simpson College. 

Sinikka Waugh from Your Clear Next Step LLC ran both sessions after President Jay Simmons gave opening remarks.

Both Simmons and Waugh said they thought the sessions went well and hoped they would prove beneficial.

“I thought this went as well as any sort of mission workshop I’ve ever participated in and that’s thanks to Sinikka Waugh because she has done such a great job of keeping us focused,” Simmons said.

Answers to questions were given during the session and were then collected. Waugh and her group then work to transcribe the written answers from sticky notes. She will comb through the words used the most and run data on everything that was collected.

The data will then be given to Simmons who will share it with a committee of a faculty member, staff member and a student who will use that data to come up with a draft of a new mission and vision statement based on feedback from the community. This draft will hopefully be shared with the community around February or March so there can be forums to gather feedback.

The committee will aim to have a final draft by the middle of April so they can submit it to the Board of Trustees to vote on in their May meeting.

During the Tuesday session, 36 total faculty, staff and students attended, while on Friday 34 total faculty, staff and students attended. This includes those who attended to both sessions.

Neither Simmons nor Waugh were sure why so few students came to the sessions.

“I would have liked to have seen more students, especially at a college where I’ve seen the students be pretty engaged,” Waugh said.

Simmons sent students a survey on Tuesday. Questions are based on those proposed at the workshops. Students can share comments as the administration revise the mission and vision statement.