The completion of this PLU 2000 planning report is a significant accomplishment for this community; it deserves a moment of celebration. Its significance is a matter of both process and product.

It is no overstatement to say that dozens (some claim hundreds) of individuals have in various ways contributed to the content, style, nuance, and emphasis of this report. Throughout all the hard work here has been an atmosphere of openness, candor, and respect. Some important new relationships have been built among and between members of our community. The level of consensus expressed in the report is remarkable and a great source of strength for the future.

What, then, might we claim for this report?

First, the report articulates, in a most important way, a new statement of self understanding based on the five fundamental axioms. We must know who we are; we know better now.

Second, in articulating our self understanding, this report puts many conversations behind us. The either-or of the liberal arts/professional conversation, or the debate about freshman or transfer students is replaced by an acceptance of the complexity that is embraced in "both-and."

Third, the report urges us to at once claim our tradition and focus on the future; hence, the tradition informs our travel. The call of this report to embrace our Lutheranism and our "Educating for Lives of Service" motto while building a new academic framework that addresses the world in all of its marvelous diversity is perhaps the most significant claim of the entire report.

Yet, PLU 2000 is only a beginning. As Vice President Frame and Professor Schultz have so effectively reminded us over the past several months, the larger ambition of this project is to move us toward a future-thinking, planning culture.

So, in some cases the completion of this report hearkens the day when we might say "Let the planning begin." While such a view is overstatement, it is true that the breadth of an initial institutional plan like PLU 2000 (even when the Study Commission reports are added) renders the document and statements as guide and blue print -not as policy and practice. Shape and strategy and time table must be applied as we work out the more general recommendations of this report.

We need, for example, to move forward with our financial planning, the campus master plan, and a strategy with regard to technology. As well, we need to commence the broader conversations on future curriculum shape and wholeness, Lutheran understanding, and the engaging merit of a pluralistic global village. For it is through these continuing conversations and more specific, strategic actions that the true shape of PLU's future will emerge and so I can imagine no more exciting task.

What finally are we about? One sentence from Section II of this report, better than any other single statement, points us to our future: "PLU seeks to empower students for lives of thoughtful inquiry, leadership, service and care -- for other people, for their communities, and for the earth."

Our next round of planning begins at this point.