Three students at Penn State Beaver smile as they look at a computer together.

Our Commitment to Impact
The Pennsylvania State University’s Strategic Plan for 2016 to 2025

Executive Summary

The Pennsylvania State University’s strategic plan for the ten calendar years comprising 2016 through 2025 is the result of a broad and inclusive two-year process that involved unit-level planning for 54 academic and administrative units across the University. In concert, this overarching institutional plan was developed.

Penn State’s vision, mission, and institutional values are interwoven throughout this plan, and they ultimately drive its success. Six foundations underpin all University endeavors and are considered fundamental to implementing this plan. These foundations—Enabling Access to Education, Engaging Our Students, Advancing Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity, Enhancing Global Engagement, Driving Economic Development, and Ensuring a Sustainable Future—connect to, empower, and sustain our values as an institution.

Further, to advance Penn State’s mission and vision for the next decade and beyond, the University is committed to empowering resilience as a unifying concept. Leveraging Our Commitment to Impact, Penn State is uniquely able to help individuals, our University community, and society to respond effectively to adversity and, even more impactfully, to “bounce forward,” creating new solutions in response to complex challenges of the 21st Century. This concept shapes the thematic priorities and supporting elements and is further guided by the foundations that drive all the work of the University.

This Plan’s five thematic priorities are:

  1. Transforming Education. Penn State will be a leader in the transformation of education, including enhancing access to it, as it fulfills its land-grant mission in a 21st-century context and continues to drive discovery-focused research across disciplines.
  2. Enhancing Health. Penn State will be a leader in promoting quality of life through comprehensive approaches to enhancing personalized and population health, achieved through a commitment to and investment in relevant research, education, clinical practice, and outreach.
  3. Stewarding Our Planet’s Resources. Penn State will be a leader in creating comprehensive solutions to mitigate the dangers of climate change and address the challenges of providing safe and abundant water, clean and renewable energy sources, and plentiful and nutritious food.
  4. Advancing the Arts and Humanities. Penn State will be a leader in the arts and humanities, utilizing them—along with the sciences and other disciplines—as agents of change in addressing complex global issues.
  5. Empowering Through Digital Innovation. Penn State will be a leader in preparing students for success in the digital age and use digitally optimized outreach to foster economic prosperity in communities across Pennsylvania and beyond.

This Plan’s supporting elements collectively comprise a focus upon and reinforce a concept of organizational excellence:

  • Organizational Processes. Penn State will lead nationally in the design, development, and deployment of effective and agile organizational processes that support the University’s mission and vision.
  • Infrastructure and Support. Penn State will think creatively and act boldly to ensure that its academic infrastructure aligns with and supports the University’s mission and vision.
  • Constituent Outreach and Engagement. Penn State will partner directly and effectively with our constituencies in sharing consequential research, creative works, and scholarship for impact worldwide.

General implementation considerations cited at the end of this document provide a framework within which the plan’s ambitious goals will be achieved.

During a time of rapid worldwide societal change, the University’s strategic plan is a powerful beacon that will guide the institution to achieve even more meaningful accomplishments and deliver more benefits to the constituencies it serves. Penn State is committed to this plan and on delivering on our University-wide commitment to impact. We look forward to future contributions that the extended plan will allow us to accomplish.