2025 Vision Planning Process

Envisioning Berklee in 2025

As a college of contemporary music, Berklee must constantly examine the trends of our times and look to the future for direction and inspiration. Over the next few months, the college will lay the groundwork for Berklee’s next planning period, from 2015 to 2025. A Board of Trustees Vision Task Force has been created under the leadership of trustee Rusty Williams, with David Mash, senior vice president for innovation, strategy, and technology, serving as the college liason. The task force is composed of:

Vision Task Force

Lewis “Rusty” Williams, chair
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Carmichael Roberts
Matthew Nicholl, chair of the Contemporary Writing and Production Department
David Mash, college liaison

The Board has also created teams to study the significant societal and economic issues affecting higher education and the music industry, and to help shape a vision for the quality and scope of Berklee’s educational leadership in the future. The themes identified for focus include affordability and access, technology and curriculum, careers, alumni engagement, and branding and marketing. The teams formed to study these themes and their chairs are:

Affordability and Access: Mike Dreese, chair
Technology and Curriculum: Dean Goodermote, chair
Careers: Charles Hirschhorn and Kristine Higgins, co-chairs
Alumni Engagement: Luis Alvarez ‘83 and David Patrick ’79, co-chairs
Branding and Marketing: Pat Casale, chair

As these teams present their findings, and as the community provides comment and ideas on these topics, we will provide feedback on the webpages for each of these themes (click on the links to view). As we gather community input, any further themes that emerge will be presented on these community theme pages.

Bold thinking about these strategic issues will set the stage for the next revolution in contemporary music education. Our goal is to provide an online dialogue on these important topics as we collectively envision what we aspire for Berklee to be in 2025. Input may be provided through in-person meetings, via email at vision2025@berklee.edu, via an online anonymous suggestion box, and through surveys that will be sent via email. We hope you will join the conversation.

Crafting a Vision for Berklee in 2025

The college’s vision is a statement of what we aspire to become in the future. It should be an inspiring image of an ideal and achievable future. It must appeal to the hearts and minds of students, faculty, and administration and should distinguish Berklee from other institutions. It must indicate a clear understanding of where the college is today and serve as a guidepost for our aspirations. It must also support the college’s stated mission and be consistent with the school’s philosophy. View the Vision for Berklee in 2015.

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Process of Broad Engagement

The creation of our new vision is being led by Berklee’s Board of Trustees and will include participation and comment from all of our constituencies, including faculty, staff, administration, students, alumni, parents, friends, and the external community. The board owns the vision-setting process, and the college’s administration is ultimately responsible for developing strategies to achieve the vision.

In order to get the best thinking from our community in the vision-setting process, we seek to engage the various members of the extended college community in dialogue and discussion and to get feedback at various points in the process through a variety of means, including in-person meetings, town hall-style events, online surveys, online suggestion boxes, and social media.

As we set the course for strategies we will begin pursuing in September 2015, we are asking, “What does Berklee aspire to be in 2025?” Since 2005, when we enacted the current vision for 2015, our world has changed significantly. Technology has changed much of what we do, how we communicate, and how students learn. In 2005, YouTube was new and iPhones and Androids hadn’t arrived on the market, nor had massive open online courses (MOOCs). How will higher education benefit from and grow through technological change?

In 2025, will Berklee be an undergraduate music college based in Boston or a global music laboratory where musicians of all ages—from all over the world—collaborate to create new music? We are already more than an undergraduate college of music in Boston. Yes, we have 4,000 undergraduates in Boston, but we also now have 200 graduate and study-abroad students at our Valencia, Spain campus, 12,000 students in our online continuing education program, and more than 275,000 students enrolled in Berklee’s MOOCs through Coursera and edX.

Our Berklee City Music Network has expanded to include more than 40 sites across the U.S. that are providing after-school music programs to more than 20,000 teens from underserved communities. Our PULSE music method is being adopted for a pilot program in New York City public schools and will be used by 60,000 students, and similar pilots are planned for other major cites. Our Berklee International Network is growing as well and now has members in 20 countries. If this is the Berklee of today, what will the Berklee of 2025 be like?

Submit a suggestion via email

Submit an idea anonymously to the suggestion box

Contact

The vision planning process is headed by David Mash in the Office of Innovation, Strategy, and Technology.

Email: vision2025@berklee.edu
Telephone: 617 747-8661
Location: 1140 Boylston Street, Room 6W

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