Last academic year, we came together as a community to imagine our possibilities and ultimately to design DePaul's future. More than 3,000 faculty, staff, students, trustees, alumni, parents, and retirees participated in more than 50 listening sessions, known as Designing DePaul. Today, I'm happy to share the collective input you generously provided at those sessions.
The Designing DePaul draft report outlines initiatives that are meant to serve as guideposts for our path forward. I will emphasize that this report is not a strategic plan. Instead, it is meant to serve as a guide to help each college, school, and administrative unit design or adapt their own tailored strategic plans.
Between now and the end of September, I encourage our DePaul community to review the report and submit your comments via the Designing DePaul website. We will incorporate your feedback into the final report and present it to the Board of Trustees in October. From there, I will ask each college, school, and administrative unit to begin the work to craft new strategic plans – or adapt your current one – to build on the initiatives that came out of our Designing DePaul sessions.
All the initiatives described in the Designing DePaul report will visibly move forward this academic year. Throughout the year, you can expect to receive regular progress reports from both me and leaders across the university. In September, we will launch a new initiatives website that will provide a visual timeline – a digital version of the paper copy distributed at today's convocation ceremony. This website will also serve as a hub for all related communications, and I will share it with you as soon as it is available.
Supporting these ambitious initiatives requires an immediate expansion of our philanthropic efforts. This afternoon, we will officially announce the launch of two focused campaigns that will enhance both our academic and athletics enterprise. The academic campaign will fuel the creation of three interdisciplinary institutes related to poverty, environmental sustainability, and artificial intelligence. The athletics projects include the construction of a state_of_the_art practice facility and the modernization of the Sullivan Athletics Center. Both campaigns will directly benefit our students and foster long-term financial health for the university. I invite you to
read more about the campaign launch here.
Last year, at my inauguration, I shared a bold vision to transform DePaul into a national leader in higher education.
Every initiative that I described at this morning's Academic Convocation ceremony will propel us forward toward achieving this goal.
Thank you for everything that you do to keep DePaul moving forward. I'm energized for the year ahead and look forward to our continued work together.