About the University Strategic Plan

The university, nearly as old as the province itself, will turn 125 years old in 2033. What our university community has achieved in just over a century has been nothing short of remarkable. We at the University of Alberta today stand on the shoulders of an inspiring group of predecessors at the institution: predecessors who have worked hard to create a university that produced distinguished alumni including Rhodes scholars, a Nobel prize winner, a Canadian Prime Minister and a Chief Justice of Canada; predecessors who successfully advocated for the establishment of Canada’s only Faculty of Native Studies; predecessors who worked diligently to grow the university from an institution with fewer than 40 students in its first year to a top 150 university in the world.

While the university community can, and undoubtedly should, be proud of its substantial past achievements, the best way to respect the work of our predecessors is to continue to build on it in the future, to continually strive to be better, to accomplish more and to go further together. The challenges confronting our world today demand that we draw upon our collective strengths as a leading Canadian research university to participate in and contribute to meaningful, positive advancement in the face of a dramatically changing environment. It is with this goal in mind that we as a community come together to develop an institutional strategic plan that is formulated with current and future challenges and opportunities in mind. By articulating our common ambitions and identifying ways to combine our individual and collective strengths, we can articulate how the University of Alberta will make an impact in research, teaching and development, determine where to focus our investments, and chart the course for growth. Such a strategy will build upon previous successes, harness areas of established strengths and guide the university community towards affecting significant change.