As Arizona’s flagship, land-grant university, rooted in the borderlands of the Sonoran Desert, we are called to be a force for good. Throughout our state, on behalf of our nation, and around the world, the University of Arizona convenes people and ideas to support the potential of every student, explore and act on new insights to solve the world’s problems, and uplift our community.
Our distinctive setting—where the desert, mountains, and skies converge, and where millennia of human history and culture infuse our daily lives—shapes the university. Relying on interconnectedness and interdependence that create community on our campus and beyond, we draw inspiration from ecosystems that flourish despite apparent scarcity. Whether through the study of water, soil, and plant life that feeds our nation, celestial bodies seen from across the vastness of the universe, the complex cultural and linguistic history of our region, the rich artistic traditions of our community, or methods for improving rural healthcare access and outcomes, we are driven by a need to understand, engage, and improve the world around us.
We are the University for Arizona, the most significant and most comprehensive research institution in the Southwest, and we are converging around three shared strategic imperatives, with student success as our North Star.
Success for Every Student
We foster academic excellence, connection, and opportunity, preparing graduates from all backgrounds and from any community for impactful careers and lives of engaged citizenship. With a proud tradition of interdisciplinary degree programs and experiential learning, backed by national leadership in evidence-based teaching, we create the environment and community where Wildcats can pursue their boldest ambitions.
To deliver outcomes that are aligned with the university’s institutional values and potential, we must integrate student-focused resources in a seamless experience to support the entire lifecycle of education, from enrollment to graduation and beyond. This means continuing to enhance and adapt educational offerings to meet the changing needs of today’s learners and tomorrow’s society. It means including expansive opportunities to ensure every student graduates with one or more research, study abroad, internship, or other co-curricular learning experiences that foster career preparation, critical thinking, cultural competency, and entrepreneurship. And it means connecting each student to our excellent faculty and staff, to our community, and to their own sense of purpose and love of lifelong learning. We do this by:
- Integrating the work of faculty with academic affairs, student affairs, and all academic support professionals to welcome every student, support their wellbeing and sense of belonging, and ensure they have a clear pathway to degree completion and a range of fulfilling career options. This includes implementing mechanisms for timely and individualized intervention while also addressing bottlenecks that impede student progression. By doing this work we will significantly improve retention and graduation rates as a sacred institutional responsibility.
- Continually evaluating and aligning our academic programs with workforce and societal needs and opportunities so that we are preparing students to lead with foundational skills and deep knowledge. This includes responsibly and strategically accelerating the integration of new technologies—such as AI—into the curriculum.
- Better leveraging the Student Success District and other infrastructure to improve and coordinate services for all students.
- Adopting best practices in evidence-based teaching and active learning throughout the university, and incentivizing effective teaching, mentorship, and advising to enhance learning outcomes for students and professional development for instructors.
- Building curricular and co-curricular experiences—integrated with our research enterprise—that show students how to approach the unknown with curiosity and encourage them to develop skills needed for meaningful engagement in an interconnected global society, while advancing a culture of entrepreneurship and problem-solving.
- Leveraging the strengths of our borderlands region to create place-based learning experiences across disciplines so U of A students and those from K-12 and community college partners can explore, understand, and lead in addressing global grand challenges.
- Enhancing learning and professional development for graduate students by prioritizing formal and informal opportunities for transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary connection, leadership training, and mentorship for the next generation of professionals and scholars.
- Using a variety of learning and teaching modalities and leveraging our engagement networks throughout the state to meet students where they are. This includes opening in-person and online pathways to U of A degree programs and ensuring that bright students of all stripes and from all walks of life can readily access them.
- Prioritizing affordability through careful stewardship of resources, operational excellence and efficiency, and philanthropic partnerships for scholarships and student support.
Research that Shapes the Future
The University of Arizona’s research, scholarship and creative endeavors transcend disciplines and solve urgent global grand challenges. We have excelled by bringing together scientists, engineers, artists, and scholars to advance knowledge and its use for the good of humankind and the planet. Because of our comprehensive excellence, the U of A’s impact circles the globe and reveals the mysteries of the universe.
We are called to address pressing challenges and to explore the unknown, using the unique advantages of our region, distinctive expertise, institutional assets, and a tradition of transdisciplinary collaboration. Inspired by our home and engaged with community, the U of A’s strengths build on each other. The result is a long history of research excellence with significant impact across the full range of disciplines. From exploring the far reaches of the Universe to understanding the inner workings of human biology, and from reconstructing the planet’s past through tree-ring and earth sciences to building the Quantum Internet while planning for its societal and legal impacts, the U of A leads at all scales of time and space.
Building on the university’s enduring strengths and driving convergence across academic disciplines, we will focus on creating new discoveries, developing new technologies, and facilitating holistic solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges, maximizing positive impact through incorporation of humanistic and societal considerations. A key strategy will be pursuing high-reward opportunities in areas where the U of A’s role as a keystone institution can serve the needs of the state and nation, including space sciences and national security, commercialization of fusion energy for a future of energy and water abundance, artificial intelligence and data science applications in biomedicine and healthcare, and modernizing mining for sustainable access to critical minerals.
To significantly expand the scale and impact of our $1 billion research enterprise, we will double down on the university’s strengths and sustain the comprehensive excellence of research, creative activity, and scholarship at the University of Arizona, deepening its integration with the fullness of our mission. We will do this by:
- Making targeted investments in areas of strategic priority and need for the state and world while committing to the sustained excellence of fundamental discovery and creating opportunities that enable success throughout the university, including the arts, humanities, education, business, and social and behavioral sciences.
- Developing and fostering comprehensive strategic partnerships with corporations and at the local, state, federal, and global levels.
- Strengthening collaboration and minimizing silos.
- Prioritizing efforts to recruit, support, incentivize, and retain the faculty and staff talent needed for a thriving environment of research and innovation, while encouraging innovative early-stage ideas that lead to large-scale proposals with the potential to attract significant external funding.
- Enhancing and incentivizing public scholarship, open science, intellectual property development, and application of research and scholarship to practical issues and challenges.
- Enabling meaningful and productive collaborations with Native Nations, as well as other community and international partners, to foster the co-creation of knowledge and its application.
- Engaging philanthropic partners in the research enterprise through the establishment of endowments for talent, facilities, and innovation, especially in areas of strategic priority.
- Optimizing information resources—such as information technology and University Libraries—for use by our university community. This includes developing a framework for the responsible use of AI and machine learning technologies in teaching, learning, research, and community engagement.
Engagement with Our Communities to Create Opportunity Together
As Arizona’s land-grant university, we are committed to democratizing education and expertise, and we engage communities throughout our state to help meet their evolving needs. For more than 140 years, we have worked with neighbors and friends from Cochise County to the Four Corners, from Yuma to the streets of downtown Phoenix and Tucson, and beyond. In all our community engagement, we embrace Indigenous knowledge through collaborative relationships with Native Nations and we will integrate local insights to co-create solutions that respect our region’s cultural traditions.
With a comprehensive academic health enterprise, Arizona’s only public veterinary medicine college, innovative leadership in Native American advancement and tribal engagement and as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the vibrancy of Arizona Arts, the passion and joy created by Arizona Athletics, a major presence in online education, and deep engagement with K-12 school districts and community colleges in STEM, literacy, and teacher education, we are here for our state. We don’t just serve Arizona—we work in partnership with our fellow Arizonans.
To adapt our historic land-grant mission for the challenges of the 21st century and beyond, we will remain informed and engaged partners in the changes to Arizona’s economy, culture, and society, thereby advancing the well-being, prosperity, and prospects of our community on a global stage. A key step will be establishing a front door to the university to provide partners with a clearer view of the university’s expertise and resources, enhancing how we work together in addressing Arizona’s and the world’s challenges as they arise in real time. This initiative will complement the efforts of our statewide engagement network and the U of A’s Cooperative Extension, and it will guarantee our presence in every part of Arizona and beyond as a resource for engagement in all disciplines and areas of need.
Priorities for our future as Arizona’s land-grant include:
- Enhancing our work to translate academic scholarship and research in collaboration with the state’s industries. This means advancing innovation, bringing new ideas to life, and enabling the continuing professional development of the state’s workforce.
- Collaborating more effectively with K-12 systems and community colleges in a coordinated effort to meet the foundational educational needs of every Arizonan, including those serving on military bases.
- Using our expertise in water resources, engineering, climate and sustainability, and the natural and built environment to ensure a resilient future in which Arizona can thrive.
- Through our health sciences and partner colleges with expertise in nutrition, community education, telehealth, and integrative wellness, we will enable community and public health while improving individual health outcomes and quality of life for Arizona residents.
- Harnessing the passion and joy generated by Arizona Athletics, we will invite fans and alumni into the university to advance the success of student-athletes and deepen connections with our community.
- By streamlining operations and developing internal communications with a focus on more effective coordination at the individual, departmental, and college levels, we will align efforts across the breadth of the institution so that university resources and expertise are easily accessible to all students and members of our local and global community.
To be Arizona’s flagship, land-grant university means we will always be deeply embedded in the fabric of our state’s history and that we will forever be leading its future. As the University FOR Arizona, we will support our people, gather our resources, and align our efforts with pride of purpose around these three strategic imperatives. As the world around us continues to change, our rootedness in place, space, and community will remain, and we will converge around excellence and engagement to deliver on our promise as Arizona’s keystone institution.
