Boldly Illinois 2030: Strategic Planning Framework
December 2, 2024 10:01 AM

Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to announce the launch of Boldly Illinois 2030, the exciting and uniquely Illinois approach to help us achieve our combined potential. We hope you will visit the website and read more about the strategic planning framework we will use to help guide our future for the next several years. 

Boldly Illinois is our collective opportunity to be bold in exploring new ideas, prioritize our values, and think differently about the work we do as we reimagine the role of a land-grant university in the 21st century.

Thankfully, this is not a new concept for our university. Our current impact and reputation have been shaped by individuals in our past who have not been afraid to ask tough questions, push boundaries and pioneer new solutions. Boldly Illinois 2030 embraces and encourages the idea that much of our innovation and impact does not come from top administrators — it often starts with individuals in the units and colleges who have a good idea. 

The university’s previous strategic plan, The Next 150, has many successes, and Boldly Illinois builds off of that success. 

Instead of a prescriptive strategic plan with a list of predetermined projects, this framework is intended to guide units and individuals to create them. Only you know the specific way to make an impact in your unit and in the work you do each and every day. By providing suggestions, parameters, examples and the encouragement to align your activities with our institutional values, we hope to inspire you to help create our university’s future. 

We are grateful to our university community for its steadfast engagement in the process of developing Boldly Illinois. Whether you participated in brainstorming sessions, planning summits or other opportunities, you are what makes this strategic framework uniquely Illinois. 

Throughout this academic year, we plan to announce more opportunities for you to engage with the framework and to provide more instruction and support to use it for your own planning. We wanted to share it before this semester’s end, so you can start brainstorming new ideas. And, if you take after some of the individuals who have helped shape our past, a few of those ideas just might change the world. 

Sincerely,

Robert J. Jones
Chancellor

John Coleman
Provost