Plan

• Expand access and affordability
  Support the educational goals of as many people as possible by meeting learners where they are.
• Strengthen strategic recruitment efforts

  Position recruitment and enrollment efforts to address the demographic cliff and expand our presence in the state of Illinois, the nation, and globally. Recruit and hire a vice provost for strategic enrollment to lead these efforts.

• Expand lifelong learning opportunities
  Build and clarify flexible educational pathways that support learners at every stage of life, including up-skilling opportunities, professional education, and other forms of continuing learning. Engage alumni as lifelong learners, guest speakers, and mentors to students.

• Begin our lifelong learning commitment with precollege students

  Form a true partnership with PK-12 schools to prepare young scholars for college readiness and successful, impactful lives.
• Advance scholarship that serves society
  Integrate coursework with civic-engaged scholarship so graduates can become skilled in serving communities and creating conditions where people of all backgrounds have a voice and work together to solve shared problems. Partner with industry and civic organizations to strengthen undergraduate research and expand experiential and service-learning opportunities that connect students to careers and communities.
• Prepare students for evolving environments
  Build coursework that strengthens every student’s ability to evaluate information, survey evidence, and make reasoned arguments. Build on our strengths in the humanities, the arts, and social sciences to cultivate critical thinking and creativity as necessary tools for navigating an ever-changing world, leveraging our own community as a microcosm of the diverse experiences and perspectives of the people we serve.
• Cultivate a community of belonging
  Support student belonging, mental health, and well-being across the full student journey. Design opportunities for connections that include but go beyond registered student organizations, residence halls, and cultural houses and offerings.
• Enhance co-curricular engagement
  Support opportunities for students to learn, lead, build relationships, and contribute to campus life through student organizations, cultural and recreational activities, service, and other co-curricular experiences that foster personal growth, belonging, and lifelong connections to Illinois.
• Develop pathways for student use of Artificial Intelligence
  Provide educational pathways and governance for students to responsibly learn, question, and shape AI within their academic disciplines. Promote fluency in the implications of AI to empower students to live and lead in an ever-changing technology-based world.

• Clarify meaningful assessment of student learning
  Build assessment practices for faculty to determine where instructional innovations succeed and clarify how to define whether students have mastered the material.

• Equip faculty with evidence-based tools for teaching
  Provide faculty with professional development and resources to ground teaching practices in the art and science of learning with special emphasis on integrated research opportunities and community-engaged learning modalities.

• Champion academic freedom, open inquiry, and intellectual independence

  Continue to uphold the freedom to teach, both in and outside the classroom, to research, create, exhibit, disseminate, and publish the results of their work, and to address any matter of institutional policy or action whether or not as a member of an agency of institutional governance.


Deliver a comprehensive educational life cycle strategy with priorities that expand access, enhance student success, and prepare graduates for the future. Further identify experiences that support a student’s holistic growth, development, wellness, and civic responsibility during their journey at Illinois. Additionally, deliver a separate strategy that strengthens support for teaching resources, provides meaningful assessment of student learning, and enhances modernization of technology that supports education at scale.

Co-Chairs: Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko and Kevin Jackson

Office of the Provost

• Build on existing strengths
  Curate areas of significant research strength. Examples include but are not limited to: bioprocessing and bioinnovation; health and well-being; global and cultural perspectives; next-generation computing technology; AgTech; and energy and sustainability. Building on our strengths requires rethinking how we are organized, investing in shared infrastructure, and connecting with existing community partners. 
• Nurture emerging opportunities
  Establish a nimble process to identify and invest in ambitious, high-impact interdisciplinary initiatives and opportunities that can produce human-centered solutions to society’s biggest challenges.
• Strengthen research support across the lifecycle
  Modernize infrastructure and provide appropriate staffing to support research, expand advanced computing capacity, and to ensure adequate support for proposal development, project management, partnership development, business development, IT, data strategy, unified processes, policies, purchasing, compliance, and award administration to empower and accelerate high impact initiatives. 
• Align talent and leadership to strategic research opportunities
  Develop plans for succession, professional development opportunities, and long-term sustainability for large research enterprises. 
• Integrate and interpret the human experience
  Cultivate collaboration among the creative arts, humanities, social sciences, design, and technological fields, recognizing that breakthrough discoveries emerge from multiple forms of knowledge and inquiry. Advance innovation that is informed by cultural understanding, ethical judgment, resilience, and the diverse experiences of the communities it serves.
• Participate in community-engaged research 

  Co-define research questions through reciprocal relationships with community members, practitioners, and policy makers to ensure actionable solutions in technology, health, and beyond. Build and maintain relationships by listening to communities and working to understand their needs.
• Translate research achievements for real world impact
  Work with the economic development steering group to help translate outcomes from our research into societal impact.

Develop an actionable plan to organize, capture momentum, and continue to enhance the research infrastructure to solve society’s most pressing challenges. Establish a process for selecting and supporting ambitious research initiatives, defining improvements to research administration, and supporting processes and policies to enhance collaboration, including technology, easy access to decision-support data, talent, and infrastructure.

Co-Chairs: Melissa Edwards and Andrew Leakey

Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation.

• Develop a clear picture of our external engagement
  Map our current community engagement efforts, prioritizing our signature areas as well as creating a shared understanding of who/what we mean when we use terms such as “community” and “external engagement.”

• Make it easier to work with us
  Establish coordinated “front doors” for government relations, public engagement, unit outreach work, and other public goods with shared goals, collaborative annual planning, standard measurement, and amplified success stories to highlight our community engagement work. Simplify processes for external stakeholders to partner with the university.

• Share information internally and externally
  Launch a single web resource that provides one place to learn about community engagement programs and events by building a public impact dashboard that shows offerings anywhere across the state and by providing our internal university community training on our responsibility to our stakeholders and how we are fulfilling it.

• Build partnerships that endure
  Support reciprocal, long-term, and sustainable relationships that extend beyond individual grants, projects, or personnel and strengthen Illinois’ role as a trusted public partner.

• Amplify our role as a thought leader
  Evaluate the need for additional central support for faculty and administration efforts to serve in thought leadership roles. Examine an identification, application, and outreach model for faculty and staff experts serving on state, national, global, and corporate committees, panels, and other platforms. Build the infrastructure to connect with officials at all levels of government.

• Establish Illinois as a convener
  Establish a structure and process for convening and facilitating large-scale discussions to address complex societal challenges.

• Support our internal culture of public service
  Build a culture of campus and community engagement. Convert alumni into engaged ambassadors of Illinois impact.

• Integrate civic engagement within educational efforts
  Partner with the Office of the Provost on civic engagement and provide infrastructure for community-engaged scholarship.

• Amplify our engagement efforts
  Communicate our impact clearly so students, faculty, staff, community partners, residents, and policy makers know how much the university values them, how they belong in shared civic projects, how they can contribute meaningfully, and how Illinois contributes to their well-being.

• Make a lasting impact at local, Chicago, state, national, and global levels

  • Champaign-Urbana and central Illinois
    Build reciprocal relationships with the local community to identify and address a major, shared challenge. Use Illinois’ cultural institutions, intercollegiate athletics teams, and public spaces to bring community members into shared experiences that strengthen connection and local identity. Make our campus a more welcoming place for members of our local community through our public engagement spaces.

  • Chicago
    Create a more focused, high-impact model for Chicago engagement with special focus on vehicles for transformational impact across many disciplines. Leverage Chicago alumni to connect with the city’s civic, professional, and philanthropic networks for new engagements. Solidify Chicago’s role as the “Central Coast” innovation hub that attracts and supports creators and entrepreneurs.

  • State of Illinois
    Uphold our responsibility to serve the full state of Illinois. Showcase our impact on all 102 counties, leveraging the existing infrastructure of Illinois Extension and the Prairie Research Institute. Develop better systems for connecting faculty experts with local and state governments; provide executive programming for legislators and local governments. Leverage Fighting Illini athletics as the state’s flagship athletics team and pride-building touchpoint.

  • Nation
    Provide more support and opportunities for university community members to serve as thought leaders on federal advisory bodies, agency panels, and industry boards and proactively work to ensure Illinois research informs policy on questions of societal consequence.

  • Global
    Partner with our international community to develop a working public
engagement network by leveraging connections with international alumni, partner institutions around the globe, and the international communities of Champaign-Urbana and Chicago to develop sustained relationships that extend the university’s reach and enhance support for our stakeholders.

Conduct asset/structure mapping of current external engagement efforts. Develop a more coordinated approach across the defined focus areas that supports information sharing and collaborative planning to remove or mitigate barriers to partnering with the university. Determine high impact universitywide engagement opportunities (existing or new) to focus on and what activities to pause or sunset.

Co-Chairs: Jake Pinholster and Kandace Turner

Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administrative Strategy

• Build an actionable model for industry engagement
  Establish a clear front door for industry partners, creating business development strategies that strengthen proposal development, contracting, intellectual property, project management, and corporate relations at industry speed. Create a cross-college and institute response model that accelerates pursuit of major proposals, applied research partnerships, and economic development opportunities as one university.
• Unify and utilize our cross-campus assets as a proving ground for innovation 

  Leverage Research Park, Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, iFAB Tech Hub, and college and institute-based infrastructure and programming to expand industry relations and promote start-up formation.
• Anticipate and address needs through strategic partnerships
  Convene industry, government, community, and other partners to shape research and workforce priorities and collaborate to create impactful programs and partnership opportunities.
• Connect education and talent development to a changing workforce
  Establish a coordinated process to identify employer and community needs and adapt educational programs for cutting-edge professional and lifelong learning.
• Accelerate translation, innovation, and commercialization
  Invest in pathways that move university research and discoveries into products, ventures, services, and other real-world applications at industry speed. Strengthen support for validation, prototyping, licensing, venture formation, and industry adoption.
• Expand the entrepreneurship ecosystem at Illinois
  Strengthen efforts to connect entrepreneurial education, experiential learning, mentorship, incubation, funding, and external partnerships across the university. Expand opportunities for students, faculty, staff, alumni, incubator clients, community members, and entrepreneurs to develop their ideas, public-sector innovations, and ventures.

• Utilize the Illinois alumni network
  Create a model to engage and leverage alumni as industry connectors, mentors, investors, advisors, learners, and ambassadors.
• Leverage our work in economic development to positively impact our stakeholders in Champaign County, larger central Illinois, Chicago, the state of Illinois, the nation, and the world
  • Champaign County and central Illinois
    Work closely with local government, business, and non-profit leaders to strengthen the region as a place where people and businesses thrive by developing, attracting, and retaining talent, connecting our university expertise with small businesses, public sector innovators, nonprofits, cultural and creative economies, and local community needs. Create career pathways and prepare local talent through partnerships with schools, community colleges, apprenticeships, and workforce programs to connect to careers at the university.
  • Chicago
    Leverage Innovate Illinois, IQMP, and DPI to coordinate engagement models that unify our existing Chicago programs to be responsive to the demands of the city’s workforce, research, innovation, and entrepreneurship ecosystems. Engage alumni base, civic organizations, and government to enhance connections to industry needs and amplify thought leadership.
  • State of Illinois
    Strengthen the state’s workforce and industries to respond to evolving technology by developing free or low-cost responsive educational programs. Support communities and employers with the need for expertise in changing landscapes. Partner with state and regional economic development organizations on business attraction and retention, industry clusters, talent, and infrastructure that creates jobs and supports job growth.
  • Nation
    Translate pressing societal needs into research, innovation, products, ventures, talent, and economic value. Set the agenda in our focus areas and position Illinois to lead major public and private efforts.
  • Global
    Prepare globally competent graduates to address the world’s challenges, build partnerships with international institutions and companies, and leverage our international alumni network to advance research, talent development, innovation, and economic development.

Deliver an institutional economic development strategy that identifies the research opportunities where Illinois can lead at scale; strategically increases capacity to bid and deliver; and organizes talent, entrepreneurship, and lifelong learning as one employer-facing and community-facing enterprise. Include a strategy to expand internships, apprenticeships, capstones, industry-engaged research, joint-funded Ph.D.s and other experiential learning opportunities that reduce educational costs and provide applied experience to jumpstart and promote career pathways. The steering committee will define the front door for industry partners and the applied research infrastructure required to deliver an operating model for adult and professional education.

Co-Chairs: Rashid Bashir and Laura Bleill

Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation

• Develop a new budget model to address the limitations of the current model
  Develop a budget model that supports our entrepreneurial spirit; removes unnecessary process barriers; funds institutional priorities with mechanisms that support revenue generation and rewards collaboration among units; and replaces incentives that drive units to compete, rather than partner. Steward resources for long-term impact by regularly evaluating programs, processes, and investments to maximize institutional resilience.

• Expand philanthropy
  Continue to work with our many friends and supporters to provide additional support for our missions.

• Build financial literacy
  Create resources so university community members understand the university’s financial realities and how resources flow across the institution.

• Build capacity for units
  Work with unit leaders to identify the resources, organizational changes, and shifts in effort needed to advance the Illinois Leads Strategic Plan. We understand that units might need to realign current activities to build capacity to address these high-priority areas. Annual reports should describe how units have aligned their activities and investments with strategic priorities.

• Audit our policies
  Conduct an audit of our universitywide policies and processes and establish a standing review process. Revise and retool the processes that constrain our mission, such as academic program approval and modification; hiring and search; purchasing and contracting; and space reallocation.

• Address external barriers
  Advocate for policies, statutes, and laws that support our missions without creating additional burdens and mandates.

• Recognize our growth
  Address staffing deficiencies in critical support areas. Modernize the tools we use to do our work.

• Support our employees
  Continue to improve the employment model so that hiring, internal career pathways, promotion, and career mobility work across employee categories and equip supervisors to support and hold accountable the people they lead.

• Govern space as an institutional asset
  Connect space decisions to the budget model, establish reallocation authority, and put underutilized capacity to work. Address deferred maintenance, energy, power infrastructure, and capacity for advanced computing and overall facility needs to support the Campus Master Plan.

• Cultivate a shared internal culture
  Encourage collaboration across units to build a culture of resiliency and shared values. Communicate institutional strategies and priorities so that every member of our university community can explain the impact of what Illinois is doing and why as well as how their individual work supports our mission.

• Prepare and support our workforce for the future
  Emphasize professional development, continuous learning, leadership development, reskilling, knowledge sharing, mentorship, and employee well-being.

Identify, review, and reassess common administrative processes that hinder institutional efficiency and identify a sustainable infrastructure strategy. Propose actionable solutions for processes that no longer serve our mission.

Co-Chairs: Brooke Elliott and Aimee Heeter

Office of the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration