Strategic Directions and University Goals

Expanding Research Integrated with Teaching, Learning, and Service
The term "research" includes all scholarly, creative, and service activities that add to and/or consolidate the developing knowledge base in an academic field.

Strategic Direction: Research is intrinsic to teaching, learning, and service at Saint Louis University. Scholarship serves the community by adding to the knowledge base and by bettering lives and serves students by enhancing teaching and by providing opportunities for students to learn through the pursuit of knowledge. The University is committed to expanding opportunities for the discovery and dissemination of knowledge with a focus on fostering the synergy among research, teaching, learning, and service.

Goal 1: Build the infrastructure and refine the administrative systems that support research.

• Redesign and improve institutional systems that support high-quality research, including interdisciplinary efforts.
• Modernize the University's research facilities and equipment.
  

Goal 2: Strengthen the culture that supports research integrated with teaching, learning, and service.

• Attract and retain high-caliber faculty, other research/academic personnel, and students.
• Enhance the University's reward/accountability system to recognize excellence in research, teaching, outreach, grantsmanship, and administration.
• Increase funding that stimulates new research and outreach efforts and attracts more external support.
• Increase publicity about key University achievements in research, teaching, and outreach.
  

Goal 3: Enhance the University's entrepreneurial environment.

• Expand partnerships with business and industry, government, and the not-for-profit sector, including community-based organizations and public institutions of higher education.
• Motivate, support, and reward entrepreneurial activity that facilitates research, pedagogical innovation, and outreach.
  

Advancing Community With Diversity
Strategic Direction: The people of Saint Louis University aspire to improve the quality of life for all persons, to work for the good of society, and to provide a welcoming environment for men and women from all racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Significant efforts are necessary to increase diversity so that the University community is reflective of the larger community. While the University remains firmly rooted in the local community, actively involved in resolving issues important to the surrounding area, it is also linked to the global community. Community service at the local, national, and international levels is an integral part of research, teaching, and learning. The University is committed to attending to community through research and service, to preparing students for the global community, and to fostering student formation in a community of diversity.

Goal 1: Build a University community of diversity to ensure that students, faculty, and staff work effectively in cross-cultural situations.

Goal 2: Expand partnerships with the local urban St. Louis community for our mutual education and benefit.

Goal 3: Expand partnerships with international Jesuit universities and ministries in order to educate for citizenship in the global community and to attract international faculty, students, and staff.

Fostering Technology Dedicated to Student Formation and the Generation of Knowledge
Strategic Direction: Technology is a tool that shapes the way the Saint Louis University community interacts internally and with the world, enhances pedagogy, increases learning opportunities, facilitates research, and improves service to the community. Technology offers the opportunity to develop alternative educational paradigms appropriate to the mission of the University. The University is committed to developing and implementing technology to advance student formation, to benefit research, to enhance service, and to better society in the Jesuit tradition.

Goal 1: Pursue excellence in teaching and learning through the appropriate integration of technology with teaching.

Goal 2: Stimulate a critical awareness and analysis of the impact of technology on human relationships, values and community.

Goal 3: Support the integration of technology with research and scholarly activities.

Goal 4: Expand research and research opportunities directed towards development of new technologies with the potential for commercialization.

Goal 5: Continually enhance and sustain an infrastructure supporting the effective use of technology in teaching, research, service, and administration.

Goal 6: Develop a budgeting process on the University, school/ college and departmental levels that provides ongoing support for technology for teaching, research, service, and administrative functions.

Promoting Continuous Institutional Learning and Innovation
Strategic Direction: Saint Louis University strives for excellence in the fulfillment of its purposes of teaching, research, and service. Innovation, change, and discovery are respected and encouraged in an environment that promotes risk-taking and supports willingness to change in order to pursue excellence. Continuous review and improvement of the objectives that determine the educational experiences for students; of courses, programs, and curricula; of the physical environment for learning and living; and of the utilization of resources to sustain quality are the means for the University to become the finest Catholic university in the United States. The University is committed to continuing to strive for excellence by systemically incorporating processes and structures to promote continuous institutional learning and innovation.

Goal 1: Foster communication to promote integrated decision making, collaboration, and innovation.

Goal 2: Establish a continuous review and feedback system at the unit level for the pursuit of excellence.

Goal 3: Modify the reward systems used by the University with a view to fostering and supporting continuous learning that leads to innovative efforts.

Goal 4: Decentralize programmatic and financial decision-making to promote flexibility and empower administrators, faculty, and staff to become more accountable and innovative in the allocation of people and resources.