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The Plan

The Plan

The Foundations of Enduring Excellence

Great universities are expected to last. While universities are by some calculations the oldest continuous institutions in the world, we are entering a period marked by unprecedented competition, stressed resources, heightened expectations, and rapidity of change. If Indiana University is to thrive in this environment, we must be focused and farsighted in our actions and investment of resources.

Indiana University has been engaged for several years in efforts to reevaluate how we achieve our core missions of education and research. As a result of those efforts as we developed the Bicentennial Strategic Plan, much has been accomplished to build the foundation for Indiana University’s enduring strength, and to keep IU on the course of greatness in its third century.

The foundation of the Bicentennial Strategic Plan included the Principles of Excellence, ten broad principles that encompass the many areas in which a great university must be excellent; the New Academic Directions Report, which precipitated the most comprehensive restructuring of the university’s academic structure in its history; Blueprint 2.0: The Bicentennial Strategic Plan for the Regional Campuses of Indiana University, which ensured that IU’s regional campuses thrive and provide an excellent education to a wide range of Indiana students; IT strategic plans that helped make the university a national leader in the uses and applications of IT; the master plans for IU’s campuses; and the IU International Strategic Plan, which has helped to make IU one of the nation’s most international universities.

As the IU Principles of Excellence recognized, a great university must do a great many things very well, and a great public university must be accountable to the many constituencies who have a just claim on the university’s attention. Thus, the Principles provided the starting point and the organizational structure for the Bicentennial Strategic Plan. The Plan added eight Bicentennial Priorities, which reflected the scope and diversity of a great university while providing needed focus and direction to assure real progress.

Specifically, the six domains of the Principles of Excellence in the plan—education, faculty, research, international, health, and engagement—contained among them eight Bicentennial Priorities. The Action Items within the Bicentennial Priorities were supported by university-level investment, and were the subject of multicampus actions and initiatives. The Bicentennial Priorities had associated metrics to measure progress through to the bicentennial year.

Recognizing that the core work of the university takes place at the unit level, implementation of many or most of the Bicentennial Priorities and Action Items occurred at the campus and school levels. Given the three-part mission differentiation of Indiana University (IU Bloomington, IUPUI, the IU Regional Campuses: IU East, IU Kokomo, IU Northwest, IU South Bend, IU Southeast, and IPFW), and its associated organizational structures, one, some, or all campuses took the lead in implementing individual priorities and action items, depending on missions and capacities. Likewise, different kinds of campuses implemented the priorities and actions in different ways. Campus and administrative unit strategic plans and annual budgets therefore specifically demonstrated how they advanced or contributed to each of these priorities to the extent and in a manner that is consistent with their respective missions. In addition, the definition of benchmarks and targets for the metrics, and the specific implementation steps for the action items, were the subjects of detailed campus and university implementation plans developed through our institutions of shared governance.