What We Heard

Over this academic year, the University of Alberta community has been engaging in a planning process to develop a new institutional strategic plan for 2023 and beyond. The strategic plan will articulate the collective ambition of the university, summarizing priorities and broad actions while still allowing the University of Alberta the flexibility to adapt and respond to significant emerging opportunities.

The University of Alberta’s strategic planning consultation process has so far included key informant interviews with U of A community members, external stakeholders, community and industry, U of A staff and student roundtable sessions, student and staff surveys, U of A Board of Governors, GFC and Senior Leadership retreats and a joint GFC-Senate-Board of Governors session.

The consultations have not quite finished. However, there appears to be enough consensus about the elements of a plan that an outline of the way forward can be drawn. This report explains what has been learned so far and some ways in which a strategic plan could move things forward.

This report is not a draft of a strategic plan, but it is an important milestone on the way towards a new plan. It is a report that records the key findings from discussions that have taken place across the University of Alberta community over the past five months. The purpose of the report is to capture the common threads of the numerous discussions that have taken place about the University of Alberta’s future and distill them into a common narrative.