Executive Summary
Starting in the fall of 2004, Duke University has engaged in an intense period of strategic planning. Over this period, schools, institutes, and centers assessed their strengths and weaknesses, provided strategies to enhance their activities, and identified the infrastructures and resources necessary for success. As an institution we have thought creatively and ambitiously about how we could strengthen academic units to achieve their aspirations, build on our institutional priorities, and create synergies across school boundaries. We have ensured that we have the management processes and incentives to target current resources on critical academic priorities and to use our central strategic initiative funds to maximum institutional advantage.
The prologue frames a new paradigm for higher education and how Duke's distinctive advantages position us for leadership.
Chapter 1 discusses the history and trajectory of the university, our distinctive identity and ambitions, and the areas we most need to target for improvement. It is only in this context that our goals and strategies can make sense. Duke's ambition is targeted not towards rankings but rather towards achieving a place of real leadership based on substantive contributions to society through the education we provide, the research that faculty pursue, the lives our graduates lead, and our direct involvement in making our local community a better place to live and work.
Chapter 2 undertakes an analysis of the planning environment in which Duke must operate; one that is common to all universities, but through which we must forge our own unique path, taking advantage of our own particular ambitions and institutional strengths. The common environmental challenges and opportunities include: increased demand for public trust and accountability; increased globalization of research and education; rising costs of education and financial aid; changing patterns in federal research funding; keener competition for faculty, students, and financial resources; changing definitions and methods of teaching and learning; rapidly changing means of information access and learning spaces; renewed call for ethical reflection and commitment; and heightened expectations by undergraduates and their families for personal services and co-curricular programs.
Chapter 3 defines our enduring themes - interdisciplinarity, knowledge in the service of society, centrality of the humanities and interpretative social sciences, internationalization, diversity, and affordability and access - and their implications as hallmarks for our plan. Our distinction rests in how these themes are manifested in our everyday activities, how they build on school and departmental strengths, and how they work together, enabling us to realize our collective institutional vision.
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