What are the issues facing our state, our nation, and our world that Berkeley is uniquely suited to address through its teaching and research? What adjustments to our academic and co-curricular programs would have the most impact on the quality of the student experience? How should UC Berkeley change to enable the campus to best serve the growing population and changing needs of California? How can Berkeley create a strong financial model with an evolving diversity of revenue sources all the while continuing to serve its public mission?
These were among the important, complex, and interrelated questions that faculty, staff, students, administrators, and alumni explored through a strategic planning process that the campus undertook throughout 2018.
150 years after its founding, UC Berkeley is renowned for its excellence, for the opportunities it affords students of all backgrounds, and for its pioneering achievements across all manner of disciplines. While Berkeley is poised to remain a leader for decades to come, ensuring the campus’ continued strength required that we examine its institutional priorities in the context of a new higher education environment, changing expectations of what a university can be, and broader societal trends. The 2018 strategic planning process was designed to help Berkeley leadership develop a clear sense of the campus’ current and future opportunities and vulnerabilities, identify means of capitalizing on or mitigating them, and establish a framework that would help chart the best path forward for the nation’s most celebrated public institution of higher education.