The N2025 Strategic Plan outlines the aims, strategies, expectations, and targets for the first five years of the 25-year vision articulated within the N150 Commission Report. The N2025 Strategic Plan contains six ambitious aims. Each aim represents a purpose or intended outcome. Supporting each aim are strategies and expectations. Strategies are actions that can be taken to move toward the aim. Expectations are anticipated changes that will be realized through the implementation of the strategies. Targets are quantifiable metrics that serve as benchmarks to achieve by 2025.
Importantly, it is not the intent of this plan to be prescriptive. The plan does not define implementation details, by design. These tactics are best developed by the campus leadership, community, and units.
The use of words such as “students,” “faculty,” “staff,” and “engagement” within the N2025 Strategic Plan are meant in the broadest sense. Students include undergraduates, graduates, post-graduate and professional students, and often alumni and life-long learners. Faculty include individuals who are in both tenure leading and non-tenure leading positions. Staff include all non-faculty professionals. Engagement refers to relationships with stakeholders that provide opportunities to partner around shared goals, enable a bidirectional flow of information and knowledge, and realize broad impact.
Finally, this N2025 Strategic Plan is meant for the entire university community. It is not expected that every unit or every individual will act on every strategy in the plan. Some units and individuals will resonate with different portions of the plan. No individual or unit will do everything, but it is expected that every individual and unit will contribute in meaningful ways to our shared goals of increasing the impact and excellence of the university. It is also expected that the entire campus will embrace the philosophy that every person and every interaction matters, and that this will be transformational for our campus community.
Download a PDF of the Strategic PlanPursuit of N150 Vision Starts with N2025 Strategic Plan
In 2019, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln proudly celebrated its 150th year of impact to Nebraska, our students, our community, and the world. Leading up to our sesquicentennial celebration, Chancellor Ronnie Green tasked more than 150 stakeholders — faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members — to chart an imaginative future for our university.
At its conclusion, the N150 Commission laid out a bold vision over the next 25 years:
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is unparalleled among public research universities in access, opportunity, innovation, and life-long experiential learning.
Importantly, the N150 Commission defined four core aspirations to guide our path over the next 25 years:
- Nebraska students co-create their experience
- Our research and creativity transforms lives and learning
- Every person and every interaction matters
- Engagement builds communities
The full report of the N150 Commission can be found on the N150 website.
To take real and meaningful steps toward turning this bold vision into reality, Chancellor Green launched a faculty-led process to develop a five-year strategic plan. In his 2019 State of the University address, Chancellor Green challenged the university to ensure that 25 years from now leaders would “look back on this inflection point moment and say, ‘Wow, they were not only thinking, they were truly IMAGINING!’”
Development of the N2025 Strategic Plan
Thirty members of the university community — faculty, students, staff and senior leaders — were asked to serve on the N2025 Strategy Team. Four faculty members were chosen as co-chairs to garner strong representation of university faculty. Also appointed were the university’s vice chancellors, given their ultimate responsibility to implement the strategic plan.
Over the course of 12 months, the co-chairs and Strategy Team conducted nearly forty meetings across our university community to seek input and feedback. The draft plan was publicly released to campus for comment and more than four hundred comments were received. The result of this inclusive process is a plan that mirrors the aims of our collective campus community and its leaders.