Research and Creative Practice Goals
A 2023 review of the research and creative practice enterprise recommended development of universitywide goals to advance the competitiveness of the university’s research mission. The goals support Vision 2034 and offer a template for making key elements actionable across all three campuses.
The University of Michigan’s Research and Creative Practice Goals are the next step in supporting Vision 2034 and advancing the competitiveness of the university’s critical research mission. In an effort initiated by President Santa Ono, the Office of the Vice President for Research has engaged hundreds of internal and external research experts over the last year to develop guiding principles that will inform research strategy and investments for the near- and long-term.
The Research and Creative Practice Goals include:
Impact
We meet the greatest challenges in far-reaching and innovative ways. As the defining public university, we focus on what matters. Working together, we harness unique combinations of experience to improve our state, nation, and world.
Interdisciplinarity
We achieve excellence by being greater than the sum of our parts. We spark and propel diverse interdisciplinary collaborations, combining our breadth and depth of expertise to serve the common good.
People
We enable and empower leaders and community builders. We attract, support, and value people who energize our community and inspire future generations. Together, we advance the university’s vital public mission more powerfully than ever before.
Infrastructure
We build and bolster systems and structures to accelerate discovery. From a foundation of strong, strategic infrastructure, we cultivate creativity and accelerate innovation – now and for decades to come.
These goals reflect feedback from numerous university stakeholders and a blue-ribbon panel of national research leaders that included the desire for more coordinated and forward-looking strategies.
The goals will shape future research priorities and be used as a basis for new incentives, programs, actions, and evaluations. In the coming months, academic units will be tasked with developing their own plans for how they will meet these goals.
From healthcare to climate change, public policy to engineering marvels, our researchers are working toward breakthroughs with global significance. Together, the Vision 2034 framework and our universitywide Research and Creative Practice Goals provide an important focal point for everyone at U-M to collaborate more efficiently, innovate more impactfully, and serve our state, our nation, and our world more effectively than ever before.
At the University of MIchigan, our research enterprise is at the very heart of our public mission. These goals will help us work together more effectively to benefit many more people in many more ways.
Updates
October 2024
Research, creative practice goals align with Vision 2034
The Record, October 22, 2024