With the one hundred year anniversary of the School of Foreign Service only four years away, the new Centennial Vision Committee has begun seeking student input in order to effectively modernize the vision of the school. The committee and the SFS Academic Council will host a dinner this Wednesday, to engage students in the discussion about the future of the SFS.
The Centennial Vision Committee, composed of associate professors Joanna Lewis, Rochelle Davis, Lahra Smith, and David Edelstein, was created by Dean Hellman to update the vision of the SFS. According to Edelstein, who also serves as the committee’s co-chair, the group acknowledges that while the goal of the SFS to prepare students to be global leaders remains static, the way that they should be executed changes over time.
“How the mission of the school is enacted changes over time,” Edelstein said. “Our task as a committee is to think about how that mission might be enacted in the century going forward.”
The committee is to analyze many aspects of the SFS, including alumni relations, student experiences, and faculty research. Members of the committee have spent the past month having preliminary conversations with the many constituencies that will be involved in the future of the SFS, including both undergraduate and graduate students.
“Everybody agrees that it is critically important to engage students on this,” Edelstein said. After a discussion with the SFS Academic Council, the committee determined the best initial way to involve undergraduate students in their project is to hold a dinner where they can voice their opinions about an updated vision for their school.
Additionally, according to Edelstein, there is also the possibility of a fundraiser surrounding the centennial. If a fundraiser is to be had, Edelstein noted that it will be fashioned to reflect the new vision of the SFS.
Although the future plans of the committee remain contingent on the present, how the SFS can best realize the mission of the school over the coming years remains its focus.
“We do know concretely that the SFS has changed over the past one hundred years,” Edelstein said. “This is an opportunity for us to think about how we want to do things going forward, and what we want to be as a school.”
