Like the opening chapter of the latest bestseller, the first year of a
new strategic plan introduces the characters and plotlines that will
motivate readers through the story. As the university began to embrace
Grounded in Mission, DePaul’s new strategic plan, investments were made
and initiatives launched to generate the results envisioned in its
six priorities by the plan’s end in 2024.
Students are gaining access to DePaul through new points of entry.
About 15 percent of the fall 2019 freshman class benefitted from new
scholarships worth $80,000 over four years that targeted high-achieving
Chicago Public Schools and Illinois Catholic high school
graduates, lowering financial access barriers. Other students are
attracted to programs that will prepare them to thrive as global citizen
leaders. Last year, the faculty approved nearly 50 new programs,
combined degrees, minors, concentrations and certificates. Of them,
about a dozen launched in fall 2019.
A new role in DePaul’s story is being played by Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnée, the
inaugural Holtschneider Endowed Chair in Vincentian Studies. Brejon
de Lavergnée arrived
at DePaul from the Sorbonne Université in Paris and has already begun
sharing his take on the Vincentian world, derived from his vast
knowledge of the Daughters of Charity and the Society of St. Vincent de
Paul.
The university’s future builds on its foundational backstory of
diversity and inclusion. Today, the challenge is to create an
environment where DePaul’s record 8,900 students of color feel
comfortable and welcome. The same is true for the university’s 800
faculty and staff of color. DePaul took three major actions in that
direction last year:
- Joining the Illinois Equity in Attainment initiative to
advocate for and implement practices that support low-income students
and students of color to complete their college degrees.
- Selecting two faculty members as the first Presidential Fellows to produce data-driven strategies DePaul can implement to move closer to inclusion.
- Implementing a Women and Minority-Owned Vendor Program to create more opportunity for small business partners.
Academic excellence is a driving
theme in DePaul’s story. In 2018-19 a new $2 million endowed Academic
Growth and Innovation Fund solicited faculty and staff ideas, 16 of
which were funded. Additionally, the number of internally-funded awards
granted to faculty in the past five years has increased by about half,
while the dollars committed have risen by about 40 percent.
Unceasing enhancements to quality across the university have led to
impressive recent rankings for the School of Cinematic Arts and The
Theatre School, along with special nods to programs including game
design, animation, MBA and entrepreneurship, among others.
Student success is the natural outcome of DePaul’s ongoing quality elevation storyline. New
student success coaches
were trained and deployed in 2018-19 to move forward Discover Chicago
exercises that encourage students to explore their purpose. These
coaches now work with freshmen and transfer students to create specific
action plans to help them achieve their individual visions of success.
Increasingly, those visions include preparations for succeeding in a
multicultural world. Students who infuse their college careers with
transformative global learning activities can now earn a
Global Fluency
designation that appears on their official transcripts. Students are
also fortifying their international fluency by applying for and winning
awards from distinguished scholarship programs, such as
Fulbright, Boren and Gilman.
Higher education’s financial story has been a challenging one in
recent years, and DePaul is resolute in building its fiscal strength for
the future. DePaul hired new regional recruiters and dispatched them to
areas producing more high school graduates than Illinois. The “
Here, We Do” brand campaign
communicated the many ways DePaul capitalizes on the city, as well as
how graduates are contributing to Chicago. Finally, an aggressive
strategy to grow the endowment to $1 billion has been inching forward
through fundraising, investment strategies and a return-to-principle
practice.
There will be many plot twists yet to come in DePaul’s story, and
as it always has been, faculty, staff and students will determine how it
unfolds.