Daniels outlines priorities for JHU for remainder of decade

President Ronald J. Daniels has released the final version of the Ten by Twenty initiative, an articulation of ambitious priorities for Johns Hopkins University through the remainder of the decade.

The plan, available online, seeks to enhance Johns Hopkins' stature and map out approaching challenges and opportunities for the university.

In November, Daniels released a draft version of the plan and invited others to share their thoughts and chart together a common path forward. During the past six months, Daniels and other members of university leadership hosted more than 35 discussion sessions with more than 1,000 members of the university community—deans, trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumni—to refine the plan, which had more than 700 revisions.

"My consultations about this document over the last many months only underscored for me what I already knew: Ours is a rare and remarkable community of minds, a home to truly extraordinary discovery and teaching, experimentation and entrepreneurship, service and healing," Daniels said in a message announcing the final version of the plan.

Ten by Twenty builds off four overarching themes: one university, individual excellence, a commitment to communities, and institution building.

Daniels says that a clear and wide-ranging vision is needed to confront higher education's looming challenges, such as the uncertainty of federal funding sources, a competitive global academic marketplace complicated by the emergence of nontraditional online learning environments, and the evolution of student expectations for campus life, among others.

The 10 goals for 2020 are:

• Selectively invest in those programs and activities that will advance significantly our core academic mission.

• Strengthen our capacity for faculty-led interdisciplinary collaboration and launch a set of innovative cross-cutting initiatives that will contribute substantially to the world of ideas and action.

• Enhance the impact of Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Nursing as the world's preeminent health sciences enterprise by deepening collaboration among these entities and with disciplines in other parts of the university and across the globe.

• Build Johns Hopkins' undergraduate experience so it stands among the top 10 in the nation.

• Build on our legacy as America's first research university by ensuring that at least two-thirds of our PhD programs stand among the top 20 in their fields.

• Attract the very best faculty and staff in the world through a welcoming and inclusive environment that values performance and celebrates professional achievement.

• Enhance and enrich our ties to Baltimore, the nation, and the world so that Johns Hopkins becomes the exemplar of a globally engaged urban university.

• Strengthen the institutional, budgetary, technological, and policy frameworks necessary to set priorities, allocate resources, and realize the highest standards of academic excellence.

• Reinforce our position as the leading university recipient of competitively funded federal research support while increasing the amount of annual research investment from other sources with appropriate cost recovery.

• Develop the resource base necessary to support investments in key academic priorities.

The articulation of these priorities is only the beginning, Daniels said. Targeted efforts across the university will be needed to advance the Ten by Twenty goals.

Daniels invites the entire community to explore the document and contribute thoughts about how to advance the priorities. He also said to watch the website for opportunities to implement the Ten by Twenty goals in the coming months.

Starting next year, Daniels will post on the Ten by Twenty site annual reports that document progress along each of these priorities.

To view the complete plan, go to jhu.edu/10x20.