In the second forum this week, University Provost Daniel Linzer presented parts of Northwestern’s tentative Strategic Plan to members of the Evanston-based Northwestern community Tuesday.
About 100 people, most of them faculty and staff, attended the forum in the James L. Allen Center’s Tribune Auditorium from 9 to 11 a.m. Linzer presented the information, a broad “framework” of the plan, in a slideshow.
The slideshow was also presented Monday at a similar forum on the Chicago campus.
A completed draft of the Strategic Plan is scheduled to be released in December. NU will formulate its next capital campaign and define the University’s primary priorities based on the plan.
At the forum, Linzer invited audience members to give their opinions on the plan, and several obliged, mostly asking questions about why certain programs and parts of NU were not identified specifically as strengths in the proposal, like the Cognitive Science Program, the University Library system and the Block Museum.
The presentation highlighted areas of excellence to direct resources toward: nanoscience; the performing arts; writing and oral expression and biosciences and medicine.
It also identified emerging areas for NU to support: energy and sustainability; new media and technology; design; global health and leadership and public policy.
“It’s not a plan if we’re just putting resources into everything that we already do,” Linzer said.
On-campus spaces were another topic of discussion. A brief mention of possible space improvements on campus elicited a comment from Associated Student Government President Claire Lew regarding the possibility of a new student center.
Lew said the concept of centralizing academic space, to help promote collaboration between schools within the University, should be extended to social space for students.
The SESP senior commended the Strategic Planning Committee for its work. But she called the plan vague and said its focus on a common University experience fit the New Student Center Initiative.
“(A new student center) should be a priority of the university,” she said. “Trying to define and create a unifying and shared experience is a thing we have been talking about for so many years.”
