In January 2006, Chancellor Richard Herman released his Strategic Plan for the Urbana campus – an ambitious five-year map containing five broad initiatives focused on strengthening Illinois as an educational and research institution, as a work environment and as a partner in addressing society’s most pressing problems.

“To sustain our existing strengths, to succeed with our stated key initiatives, and to stay open to new ones,” Herman said, “we must use our available resources wisely and effectively, and we must expand our resource base to include new revenue sources. Our strategic plan is designed to ground this endeavor in our core values and to provide guidance for the ongoing development of campus priorities.”
Over the past year, campus officials have been refining the plan and working with administrators and liaisons in the colleges and campus units to develop their own strategic plans for the years ahead, to identify how their activities coalesce with and support Herman’s vision, and to establish goals and indicators to measure their progress.

“The core elements of the campus’ strategic plan has not changed,” said Stig Lanesskog, assistant provost for strategic planning and assessment. “We’re reframing it in a way so that people can better understand what we’re trying to achieve as an institution and how they can contribute in meaningful ways. We’re working with the colleges and units and helping them see how their plans link to the campus plan. The real activity – such as the teaching and the research – is going to happen in the colleges and units, so we’re making sure there’s good communication and good alignment as we go forward.”

Part of the process has been identifying the key initiatives “that we think are really going to help move this campus forward,” said Richard Wheeler, vice provost and dean of the Graduate College.
Those key initiatives are expressed as five strategic goals: leadership for the 21st century, academic excellence, breakthrough knowledge and innovation, transformational learning environment and access to the Illinois experience. Various strategic initiatives that Herman expressed in the campus plan have been linked to each of the five goals, with some initiatives, such as promoting diversity, linked to multiple goals (See “Strategic Goals and Accompanying Initiatives”).

The Council of Deans, in conjunction with Herman, Provost Linda Katehi, Lanesskog and Wheeler, also have defined five institutional values that conceptualize the overall vision of the campus plan and underpin the teaching, research, public engagement and other initiatives being undertaken to actualize the plan, (See “Our Commitment”).

“We have been thinking about what are the core missions driving all these different activities, how can we make sure the right values are in place, and how can we conceptualize all that in a really simple and straightforward way,” Wheeler said. “It’s been an absolutely intriguing exercise and a challenging one because we haven’t always drawn those connecting lines from a core set of principles to the various activities that we think are so important. There’s a tendency to think of plans as something that you write and put in a drawer somewhere. But we’re working very hard to get to a point where planning becomes a deep part of the campus culture and of the way that we all think about what we have to do and how we do it. It’s going to be necessary to keep the level of excellence that we have.”

Many – if not all – public research universities are engaged in similar strategic planning processes. With public funding for higher education diminishing, and heightened competition among universities for research funding and the best students and faculty members, developing strategic plans “is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” Wheeler said. “We don’t live in a time of expanding resources. We have demands and needs that are going to have to be dealt with in an effective way. And if we’re going to maintain and increase the kinds of strength we have as an educational and research institution, we’re simply going to have to be very careful of how we go about our business and use the resources we have available to us in the best possible way.”

For the first time, the elements of the strategic plan are being incorporated into the annual budget process, Lanesskog said. As campus units and colleges begin developing budgets for Fiscal Year 2008, which will begin July 1, they have been provided with initial data – such as student demographics, and graduation and retention rates – for developing indicators to assess their progress toward their goals and for determining the resources that they’ll need. The campus and the colleges and units are expected to have their progress indicators developed by April or May.

A new Web site dedicated to the campus’ strategic planning efforts is now available at www.strategicplan.uiuc.edu and also can be accessed from the campus’s home page.

President B. Joseph White and the chancellors of three campuses will present their first annual reports about progress toward their strategic plans to the UI Board of Trustees in July.

Our Commitment

• We embrace and advance our land-grant mission by serving the state and the nation through education, research, outreach and economic development.
• We pursue excellence through the diversity of our students, faculty and staff members.
• We foster innovative teaching, research and engagement, demanding and rewarding break-through knowledge creation and learning from our faculty members and students.
• Our educational programs promote innovation, cultivate justice, enhance social mobility, and improve the quality of life by responding to local, national and global societal needs.
• We are one campus dedicated to comprehensive excellence in the service of Illinois and the nation.
• We maximize our impact by carefully stewarding and enhancing the resources entrusted to the institution.

   

  Strategic Goals and accompanying initiatives

Leadership for the 21st century

• Promote intercultural scholarship and learning
• Increase student engagement with faculty members in research or creative activity, especially at the undergraduate level
• Strengthen honors programs that draw and serve our most capable students
• Expand participation in study-abroad experiences and internships that involve international placements
• Provide internship, practicum and other experiential learning opportunities

 

Academic excellence

• Recruit and retain exceptional faculty members
• Increase the diversity of faculty members, academic professionals, administrators and staff members
• Strengthen recruitment of high achieving students, particularly students of underrepresented populations
• Position the academy to meet 21st-century opportunities
• Develop undergraduate and graduate interdisciplinary academic programs that link to emerging areas of scholarship
• Increase opportunities for cross-disciplinary doctoral education
• Develop professional master’s programs in areas of pressing need
• Maximize our impact by stewarding and enhancing our resources

Breakthrough knowledge and innovation

• Initiate and facilitate interdisciplinary programs, including the following:
  • Illinois Informatics Initiative
  • Integrated Sciences for Health Initiative
  • Illinois Sustainable Energy and the Environment Initiative
  • Humanities and the Arts Initiative
• Strengthen and diversify the research portfolio by proactively pursuing alternate funding sources, including an expansion of corporate support
• Increase the Illinois presence in Washington, D.C., Singapore, China and India
• Strengthen our rich ties to Chicago
• Partner with local constituencies to make the Champaign-Urbana area a vibrant environment that can serve as a standard for other communities

 

Transformative learning environment

• Repair, reprogram and maintain campus facilities at a level consistent with a world-class academic enterprise
• Increase energy conservation
• Build and enhance living/learning communities
• Invest in educational technology
• Embrace the diversity of students, faculty members, academic professionals, administrators and staff members to strengthen the learning environment
• Enhance public-good facilities

Access to the Illinois experience

• Increase merit and need based aid necessary to recruit and retain the most promising students
• Increase the diversity of the student population
• Increase and excel in distance learning