In coordination with its Vision 2034 strategic vision, the University of Michigan has developed a set of guiding principles that will inform the university’s future research strategy and investments.
President Santa J. Ono, working closely with the Office of the Vice President for Research, led a strategic effort for more than a year to solicit recommendations from hundreds of internal and external research experts, including unit leaders across the university’s three campuses, national research organizations, peer universities and recipients of honors like the Nobel Prize.
Drawing upon the recommendations, Ono and leaders in OVPR developed the following four Research and Creative Practice Goals:
- Impact: We meet the greatest challenges in far-reaching and innovative ways. As the defining public university, we focus on what matters. Working together, we harness unique combinations of experience to improve our state, nation and world.
- Interdisciplinarity: We achieve excellence by being greater than the sum of our parts. We spark and propel diverse interdisciplinary collaborations, combining our breadth and depth of expertise to serve the common good.
- People: We enable and empower leaders and community builders. We attract, support and value people who energize our community and inspire future generations. Together, we advance the university’s vital public mission more powerfully than ever before.
- Infrastructure: We build and bolster systems and structures to accelerate discovery. From a foundation of strong, strategic infrastructure, we cultivate creativity and accelerate innovation — now and for decades to come.
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The new goals reflect feedback, from university stakeholders and a blue-ribbon panel of national research leaders, that included the desire for more coordinated and forward-looking strategies.
“The goals are designed to help us work together more intentionally and innovate with greater speed and scale,” Ono said. “They are critical to helping U-M advance its vital public mission more effectively than ever before.
“At the University of Michigan, our research enterprise is at the very heart of our public mission. These goals will help us work together more effectively to benefit many more people in many more ways.”
The goals will shape future research priorities and be used as a basis of new incentives, programs, actions and evaluations. They follow the development of a 10-year-vision and campus plan, two complementary efforts focused on the university’s future.
Vision 2034 calls upon the university to leverage its interdisciplinarity and excellence at scale to educate learners, advance society and make groundbreaking discoveries to impact the greatest challenges facing humanity.
To support its vision, the university also announced it would make strategic investments in seven commitment areas, including one centered on “Research, Scholarship, Discovery and Artificial Intelligence.”
The new Research and Creative Practice Goals specifically address the university’s pledge in Vision 2034 to “advance universitywide research goals by increasing U-M’s capacity for large-scale, cross-unit interdisciplinary research and managing a dynamic portfolio of frontier-defining research institutes that will lead the world in defined areas of inquiry.”
The Vision 2034 commitments also include a focus on “Innovation, Partnerships, and Economic Development,” with strategies over the next 10 years to expand the research enterprise, enhance partnerships with national laboratories and develop a new Innovation District on North Campus.
The proposed mixed-use district is a key component of Campus Plan 2050, which provides a framework that will guide projects on the Ann Arbor campus over the next several decades. The Innovation District would focus on research for a diverse array of academic units, and space for interdisciplinary research, startups, industry and governmental partners, retail and other amenities.
After additional development over the summer, the university released a more comprehensive version of Campus Plan 2050 last month.
The new Research and Creative Practice Goals also align with an institutional effort to create new ways for its researchers to amplify the impact of their discoveries and improve the quality of life for people across the state, nation and world.
This Strategy to Amplify Research and Scholarship includes enhanced support for researchers seeking large-scale grants and for foundation- and industry-sponsored research, expanded research analytic capabilities, and establishing new infrastructure to forecast new research frontiers, recognize faculty and promote career development.
“From health care to climate change, public policy to engineering marvels, our researchers are working toward breakthroughs with global significance,” said Arthur Lupia, interim vice president for research and innovation.
“Together, the Vision 2034 framework and our universitywide Research and Creative Practice Goals provide an important focal point for everyone at U-M to collaborate more efficiently, innovate more impactfully, and serve our state, our nation, and our world more effectively than ever before.”
