CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — “The Next 150,” a five-year strategic plan for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, aims to harness talents and resources to be a world-class university in every dimension of its mission.
Chancellor Robert Jones and Provost Andreas Cangellaris unveiled the plan details at an event at the Illini Union on Feb. 1. The full text of the plan is now online at strategicplan.illinois.edu.
“The Next 150 really lays out our collective vision and our bold goals for the future,” Jones said. “It’s the framework for how we will continue to serve the 21st-century needs of our community, our state, our nation and our world. We’ve been transforming the way the world lives, thinks and learns since 1867. This plan positions us to do that for the next 150 years.”
“The Next 150” includes a renewed commitment to the four goals detailed in the 2013-16 strategic plan:
- Fostering scholarship, discovery and innovation
- Providing transformative learning experiences
- Making a significant and visible societal impact
- Stewarding current resources and generating additional resources for strategic initiatives
“We create strategic plans in order to focus the unmatched research excellence and educational capacity of the university on the biggest challenges facing our society,” Cangellaris said. “This is a shared path forward toward the innovations and solutions that the world needs and that Illinois is uniquely positioned to deliver.”
More than a year of intensive planning led to a reimagining of each of these goals. From fall 2017 to spring 2018, eight goal-review sessions were held to create ideas for each of the four goals mentioned above, and 11 task forces brought additional focus to topics of critical importance: arts, data science, diversity, humanities, food security, globalization, health sciences, public engagement, social and behavioral sciences, energy and sustainability, and undergraduate education. Each task force was comprised of a group of experts across disciplines.
These groups submitted recommendations and reports at the beginning of 2018. To ensure collaboration and transparency, campus community members had an opportunity to give in-person feedback on the recommendations at the Strategic Planning Town Hall event and also online.
All of the recommendations and feedback were considered and reviewed by the provost’s office and the leadership committee in 2018. Plan details were finalized at the end of the year, in order to release the report in the beginning of 2019.
“The ‘Next 150’ sets us on a course to redefine the role of public higher education in the 21st century and to stand out as agents for the democratization of education and innovation through emphasis on diversity, access, entrepreneurship and public engagement,” Cangellaris said.
Campus leadership also recently debuted the “Stories of Impact” project, a collection of stories that show successes stemming from the 2013-16 strategic plan. In the future, that website will be updated yearly with stories that show the impact of “The Next 150.”