This site provides background, context and general information about the university’s strategic planning efforts, as well as updates and reports as they are issued by various planning groups.
On October 5, 2006, NIU President John Peters used the occasion of his annual State of the University Address to launch a comprehensive strategic planning effort firmly grounded in the embrace of academic excellence. Dr. Peters charged Provost Ray Alden with oversight of the project’s first phase: creation of an academic-based planning template that would give direction to all university planning in the next five years.
One month later, Provost Alden solicited nominations for a strategic planning task force and engaged the services of well-known planning facilitators from The Learning Alliance at University of Pennsylvania. The six-month process which followed saw more than 125 faculty, staff, students and alumni engaged in large- and small-group planning, roundtable discussions and creation of draft reports.
Task force efforts culminated in June 2007 with issuance of a report that identified four strategic imperatives to guide NIU’s planning efforts: 1) Preserve, strengthen and extend NIU’s teaching and learning environment; 2) Develop a strategy for investing in multidisciplinary scholarship and artistic clusters that complements NIU’s focus on individual scholarly and artistic achievement; 3) Strengthen and extend NIU’s global/regional impact; and 4) Make NIU an institution of ‘first choice’ for faculty, students and staff.
President Peters and Provost Alden presented the report to members of the NIU Board of Trustees in September 2007, and the president made strategic planning the focus of his State of the University Address on September 27, 2007.