Today, UBC’s Board of Governors endorsed in principle Shaping UBC’s Next Century, our new strategic plan. With the Board’s endorsement, and the plan’s approval by the UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan Senates, we embark on our next century as a leading public university.
Building on the success of UBC’s previous strategic plan, Place and Promise, our new plan focuses on three themes that we believe are critical to society today: inclusion, collaboration and innovation. This plan describes the strong connections between these themes and the core areas that define what we do as a public university: people and places, research excellence, transformative learning, and local and global engagement. We have achieved considerable progress in the past decade around Indigenous relationships, sustainability and alumni engagement, framed through Place and Promise, and these priorities are now widely regarded as fundamental to UBC.
I encourage you to read the plan at https://strategicplan.ubc.ca. You will see that it outlines our ambitions through a series of 20 strategies. Recognizing the scale of the task at hand, we have identified five areas that we feel have significant transformational potential:
- Collaborative clusters — interdisciplinary research clusters focusing on problems of societal importance.
- Great people — nurturing our global community of faculty, staff and students. Enhancing inclusion within the UBC community and deepening our engagement with Indigenous partners.
- Indigenous engagement — supporting the objectives and actions of the renewed 2018 Indigenous Strategic Plan. This area also represents our shared commitment as a university community, articulating the commitments that form UBC’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. You can learn more at https://aboriginal.ubc.ca/indigenous-strategic-plan.
- Innovative pedagogy — enriching experiential learning and research opportunities as ways to master valuable competencies.
- Thriving campus communities — focusing on the wellbeing of our UBC community, including sustainability and connectivity to our campuses.
Shaping UBC’s Next Century will guide our decisions, actions and interactions into the future, and will create a framework for resource allocation across the university. As always, people are the cornerstone of UBC. We want to inspire the very best in our students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners, and we recognize the degree to which we continue to be inspired by the people and the communities with whom we work. This is our moment to harness the energies and strengths of an extraordinary institution to contribute to sustainable and positive change, both locally and globally. This is our moment to inspire.
As we celebrate the launch of our new plan, I would like to acknowledge the dedication and effort that went into its creation. Whether you attended an open house, completed a survey, contributed to the steering committee or one of the working groups; or whether you worked ‘behind the scenes’ to bring this process to life — I offer my heartfelt thanks. I am proud of the way our community has come together to create the direction and spirit so evident in this plan.
Thank you for your support and input during this comprehensive process. I look forward to continuing this journey with you.
Professor Santa J. Ono
President and Vice-Chancellor