LAS Strategic Plan 2021-2025

Provide high impact support for student success through coordinated advising, mentoring, programming, and related activities to foster the skills and mindsets for life-long learning.

Actions:

1. Conduct a comprehensive review of our current advising model across the college and invest in systemic changes and ongoing assessment to best support our diverse student body.
2. Create the LAS Advising Academy to formalize and focus on best practices for advisor training and professionalization across the college.
3. Create a promotional path for academic advisors.
4. Expand opportunities for students to reflect on, intentionally map out, and engage in their wellbeing and career readiness while at Illinois.
5. Provide life and career coach training for advisors and others who work directly with students for student well-being and career readiness.
6. Identify and implement best practices in advising, mentoring, and professional development of graduate students.

Deliver creative and innovative teaching and learning experiences in and out of the classroom, using best practices that take into account the needs of historically underserved students.

Actions:

1. Reinvent the LAS Teaching Academy to disseminate research-based best practices in teaching and support instructors at all career levels.
2. Develop and promote programs that allow students to build relationships with members of the faculty.
3. Increase opportunities for innovative teaching and experiential learning, including community-based programs, global education, interdisciplinary collaboration, and enhanced research opportunities for undergraduate students.
4. Develop a comprehensive strategy for LAS online education.
5. Identify needs for 21st century teaching facilities across the college, including classrooms, labs, and flex spaces.
6. Expand students’ engagement with digital technologies to prepare for today’s society and workforce, including the ethical and cultural matters surrounding their usage.
7. Create measures to help students focus on core skills and values, in line with the Illinois Student Learning Outcomes.

Develop more opportunities to promote a diverse, inclusive, and accessible community, particularly for historically underserved U.S. students, students with disabilities, and international students.

Actions:

1. Foster diversity and intercultural learning by increasing the number of courses and programs of study that offer experiences to engage meaningfully with cultural differences.
2. Integrate values of diversity and equity strategically and frequently into communications with students, including in syllabi, advising websites, and college-level communications.
3. Review, assess, and adjust current model of advising, courses, and other support for historically underserved students to ensure retention, graduation, and post-graduation placement success.
4. Review and revise curricula, both at the lower levels and at the level of completion, for accessibility to students coming from under-resourced high schools in Illinois.
5. Create a strategy for and increase staffing of recruitment for diversity and equity activities, including creating relevant outreach and academic programming for under-resourced high school students, and communicating regularly with high schools and community colleges to ensure students have information and support needed for their application to Illinois.

Commit to supporting and promoting student well-being throughout our college community.

Actions:

1. Collaborate with campus partners to support student well-being through creative and integrative programming and through opportunities to expand campus mental health counseling staff.
2. Integrate values around well-being regularly into communications, including in syllabi, websites, newsletters, social media, and other college-level communications.
3. Develop opportunities and incentives for instructors, advisors, and other staff to support student well-being and provide resources for students’ academic, personal, and professional development.
4. Develop a holistic well-being coaching program for instructors and staff to promote students’ healthy lifestyles as a direct response to the mental health crisis on campuses today.