Strategic Planning

The University of Illinois Chicago College of Engineering is at a pivotal moment of growth and opportunity. Located in the heart of one of the nation’s most dynamic urban centers, UIC Engineering combines the research power of an R1 university with a highly diverse student body, ranking in the top 10 for diversity and top 40 for social mobility according to U.S. News & World Report. Its research profile and student enrollment have experienced an upward trajectory for years, with tremendous opportunity in its future.

Beginning in January 2025 and continuing through the fall semester, we will engage members of our community in the planning process – to capture their ideas and to harness our collective strengths to advance progress across key dimensions for the College.

The resulting plan will be designed to position UIC Engineering as a global leader in engineering education and research, ensuring its commitment to advancing knowledge, solving real-world challenges, and leveraging the power of diversity to create a thriving, inclusive community.

Through collaborative research and synthesis, the strategic planning process will identify UIC Engineering’s distinct differentiators and opportunities, aligning the College’s culture and goals to create a roadmap for sustained impact.

Specific goals to be achieved through the planning process include:

1. Engage key stakeholders for perspectives, ideas, and feedback.
2. Create refreshed mission, vision, and values statements.
3. Outline three to five strategic priorities and related action steps to advance the mission, vision, and values.
4. Develop a strategic plan to guide decision-making, philanthropy, and resource allocation over the next 3 to 5+ years.
5. Provide clarity and promote a focused and unifying approach to ensure progress toward achieving key priorities.

Consultants Marisa Quinn and Jennifer Judge Hensel will work closely with UIC Engineering leadership to conduct an inclusive strategic planning process, collaborating with key faculty and staff leaders to conduct activities that gather and synthesize stakeholder input.

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The strength of our planning process and the resulting strategic plan depends entirely on input from our extended College community —faculty, staff, students, alumni, university leaders, and key partners—which has been the focus of Phase One. Since January 2025, we have gathered feedback through multiple channels including:

• Comprehensive surveys of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and recruiters
• Faculty and staff virtual town hall meetings
• In-depth interviews and focus groups with faculty and students
• Engagement with the Steering Committee, Administrative Council, and Executive Council

In addition to the 74 faculty, 54 staff, 577 students, and 157 alumni who responded to our February surveys, we have connected with approximately 150 faculty, staff, and students through meetings, interviews and focus groups. This has included robust representation from every academic department. Additional engagement with recruiters, industry partners, and UIC leadership is planned for the coming weeks.

Preliminary Findings and Next Steps

While data gathering, benchmarking and analysis continue, early findings from Phase One reveal a tremendous sense of pride among all stakeholders regarding the College’s distinct purpose: engaging in rigorous research, providing high-quality education to a richly diverse student body, and serving as an engine for social mobility.

There is strong consensus regarding the College’s core strengths:

• Our diverse and inclusive community committed to accessibility
• Robust research capabilities
• Strategic Chicago location

Areas needing attention where consensus has emerged include:

• Strengthening facilities, technology and tools for research, teaching, and learning
• Enhancing internal and external communication
• Promoting industry collaboration for research and student preparation

More comprehensive findings gathered through our various research methods will inform our planning moving forward. Following analysis and synthesis of findings, the College’s academic leadership will use the information to identify priorities that will build upon our distinct strengths and sharpen our competitive advantage by advancing our research, teaching, public engagement and impact. Those priorities will be shared with the community this summer, as we seek to form small groups to advance ideas, define goals and identify next steps.

The continued engagement of the Engineering community is extremely important in this process as we work together to shape the future of our College.

The College of Engineering Strategic Planning Initiative continues on schedule with substantial progress since Phase One’s conclusion. Phase Two focused on analyzing and synthesizing findings from our extensive stakeholder engagement work, which included surveys, interviews, focus groups, and town hall meetings with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and industry partners.

Mission, Vision, and Values Development
Phase Two began with a comprehensive survey of faculty and staff seeking feedback on draft mission, vision, and values statements developed from Phase One input. More than 200 faculty, staff and students participated, providing favorable responses to all the draft statements and insights to sharpen the draft versions.

Based on this feedback, we revised the statements with additional input from the College’s Advisory Board, Administrative Council, Executive Committee, and Strategic Planning Steering Committee. The following drafts are now available for community review and continued iteration.

Working Drafts: Mission, Vision and Values

Vision

To be the top destination for a diverse learning community that’s driven to engineer impactful solutions to pressing problems – starting in Chicago and spreading throughout the world.

Mission

Through our commitment to excellence, accessible education, and impactful research, we prepare curious, proficient, and diverse engineers and computer scientists to lead and advance upward mobility locally and globally.

Values

Excellence and Innovation: We break boundaries, seek continuous improvement,  and strive for positive impact to serve society.

Diverse Environment: Our college strives to reflect our local community. We nurture an inclusive and supportive ecosystem that welcomes, seeks input from, and removes barriers for all people.

People-Focused: We foster an accountable community, testing our assumptions through interactions with individuals from many backgrounds and experiences to create effective solutions that prioritize the needs, experiences, and well-being of people.

Persistent Mindset: When things get challenging, we get even more determined. We are unafraid to fail and try until we solve important problems.

Economic Driver: We are for Chicago and beyond. We seek to drive economic success for our students, faculty, staff, alumni and our local and global communities.

Summary Findings

Planning consultants analyzed and synthesized the results from the Phase One surveys, interviews, town hall meetings and focus groups, and identified the following themes of input:

• Research and Innovation
• Curriculum and Career Preparation
• Student Life and Student Support
• Communications, Profile and Reputation
• Sense of Community and Operational Excellence

These areas demonstrate clear interconnections, with critical cross-cutting themes including supporting our diverse community and strengthening industry engagement.

Planning Retreat

Findings informed a May 2025 retreat of the following planning governance groups:

•   Administrative Council
•   Executive Committee
•   Strategic Planning Steering Committee

Retreat participants discussed the key themes above, informed by reports from College of Engineering associate deans and directors with expertise in these domains. A primary objective was to explore potential areas of focus that could enhance the College’s offerings and impact. Discussions were highly productive, yielding initial insights about maximizing our core strengths—including our Chicago location, diverse student body, commitment to fostering belonging, and research expertise—to elevate our profile and impact.

Next Steps

A set of potential priorities is under development for review by our planning governance groups. This summer, we will create broad-based teams of faculty, students, staff, and alumni to discuss these priorities, including required resources and success metrics. Our goal is to have these teams operational over the summer to ensure we deliver a draft plan for community input in early fall.

To ensure robust engagement to inform the planning process, there will be broad-based surveys of key constituencies as well as meetings, focus groups and interviews with established governance bodies representing faculty, students, staff and alumni. Engagement with key external partners will also be central to this effort.

Stakeholder Engagement

The deployment of a broad-based engagement strategy will ensure that all voices are heard, both internally and externally, and that input, participation, and perspectives are incorporated throughout the planning process.

The following communities will be engaged at various stages in the process:

• UIC-E faculty, staff, students and alumni, including established groups such as the College’s Advisory Board, Executive Committee, Administrative Council, and Student Leadership
• Local recruiters that engage with UIC
• Corporate, industry and higher education leaders, including UIC leadership

The following groups will support the strategic planning effort:

This group will support the strategic planning effort through crafting and deploying communications, building surveys, scheduling of meetings and organizing on-site logistics for events.

David Brazy Director, Communication and Marketing

Ronald Fernandes Director of Information Security and Technology

Ray Matthes Director, Engineering Media Service

Lynn Thomas Director of Faculty Affairs

At the stage of priority development, small writing groups comprising relevant constituencies will inform detailed action planning to achieve stated priorities.

Questions and Comments

Have a question or a comment? Please contact the Planning Team at engcomm@uic.edu.