Kerwin Cleans Up

Neil Kerwin is a professional, there can be no doubt whatsoever about that. He has the singular job of defining American as a school of its own, not Georgetown's backup, not GW part two. In doing this, he has the additional challenge of overcoming recent decades past of poor leadership at American. This Strategic Plan that he has created will serve, hopefully, to brand American in the way that it hopes to be seen, not in the way that other schools and popular culture have sought to brand it.

Kerwin is strong and polished. Whether it is within American's ideals or not, he realizes that American not only needs to BE excellent, it also needs to APPEAR excellent. Despite how clear it was that every answer he gave was calculated, Kerwin clearly knew that if he is going to protect, maintain, and improve American and its reputation. There were, however, certain questions I had with the ambiguity of the Strategic Plan:

It talks about equal access on pg 2, but also a form of student affirmative action on pg 8.

There is a lot of talk about American's liberal arts program, however, as of yet American does not have a formal liberal arts program.

On the note of liberal arts, knowledge is mentioned much more often than skills gained at American, implying that this school, which was once more for skills, is now aiming to be much more general and liberal arts oriented.

The main issue I had with the strategic plan was that it did not seem to represent a strong deviation from what American has been doing in the recent past. President Kerwin's response to this issue was extremely satisfying. He said that American needs to do better what it has already been doing as its main goal, especially working with alumni and defining the school.

President Kerwin seems like he has great potential to lift up this school thats been entrenched in scandal for over a decade. But what I came away with was not that it was a plan to revamp the school, but to redefine its image.