Strategic Goals

To advance the Institute, pursuant to its mission, Stevens has established an additional goal of positioning itself among the nation’s top research universities while enhancing the learning experience for all students.  The target is to be in the top 50 by 2012.  Four broad improvement objectives have been established to guide the pursuit of this goal, which in turn are comprised of a number of targeted objectives:

Enhance the National & Global Prestige of the Institute

• Sustain and enhance the diversity and responsiveness of our educational offerings to national priorities in undergraduate and graduate programs in the three schools, WebCampus, and in strategic international initiatives.
• Align PhD programs with the goals of national research leadership.
• Enhance recruitment of quality doctoral candidates through increased fellowship packages and more effective marketing.
• Provide increased incentives for faculty who lead in creative research and inventiveness while enriching student learning.
• Increase faculty’s high-impact publishing, acquisition of competitive grants, and leadership in national organizations.
• Hire faculty to achieve critical mass in research clusters (areas of strategic school focus) and research communities (areas of strategic Institute focus).
• Continuously expand institutional infrastructure to support the practice of Technogenesis® both within research communities and by individual faculty.

Provide a Strong Financial Future for the Institute

• Enhance revenue in undergraduate and graduate programs through focused initiatives.
• Build steadily advancing financials through increasing non-academic revenues, tighter controls, and improved purchasing.
• Expand the philanthropic donor base to increase charitable giving and grow the endowment, especially as it relates to undergraduate scholarships and doctoral fellowships.
• Establish supportive administrative services, procedures, and financial information systems to enable faculty and research communities to flourish.
• Expand the external research grants and contract base, especially in trans-disciplinary cluster areas.
• Improve the processes in academic and administrative areas to prioritize resource allocation in alignment with the Mission.
• Assess all governance and administrative functions and make the  necessary changes to ensure that they are carried out effectively and efficiently

Strengthen Ties with Industry & Government

• Enhance strategic partnerships to augment the Institute’s capabilities, such as joint R&D projects and investments in Technogenesis® enterprises.
• Continue to pursue partnerships with corporations that sponsor students in master’s programs.
• Expand the base of on-campus corporate recruiters and professional practice opportunities (e.g. internships, cooperative education, research).
• Increase industry/government involvement in the student learning experience and specifically senior design projects.

Improve Learning Experience

• Provide faculty training in advanced teaching approaches such as active learning, project-based learning, inductive learning, and assessment.
• Maintain a learning environment where inventiveness, creativity, and entrepreneurship are core values.
• Increase the application of advanced educational technology.
• Enhance the connections between the classroom and the “real world” by involving outside practitioners in design projects, by providing internships, cooperative educational experiences and undergraduate research opportunities, and by increasing student involvement in professional societies.
• Maintain a process to assess student learning in all our educational programs to ensure that outcomes are achieved.