Northwestern announced the formation of a new task force Monday that will help devise a global engagement strategy following the more than $100 million donation from Roberta Buffett Elliott (Weinberg ’54).

The committee, which Provost Daniel Linzer created, will evaluate the University’s current offerings and propose recommendations for the next decade. Sally Blount, dean of the Kellogg School of Management, and Nim Chinniah, executive vice president, will chair the task force.

“Northwestern, like many universities, tries to balance the creative initiative out among individual faculty, departments … within a more coordinated University-wide approach that maximizes the impact of those initiatives,” Linzer said. “Finding that balance point is really important.”

The global strategy will focus on integrating NU’s various international initiatives and strengthen its ability to recruit faculty and students from around the world.  The task force includes representatives from most of NU’s 12 schools, but only one student representative: SESP junior Sanchita Kanthadai.

Elliott’s gift — the single largest in NU’s history — was designated to expand the University’s international programming, scholarships for international students and the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, which is also named after her.

“It’s a particularly important moment for Northwestern to be undertaking this type of thinking because of the establishment of the Buffett Institute and the new resources that we have,” Linzer said. “We want to think collectively now before we make big, long-term commitments on what we’re going to be doing globally.”

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