Over the next five years, as part of Syracuse University’s $100 million Invest Syracuse: Advancing Academic Excellence and the Student Experience, the University will invest significant resources to advance the University’s global research portfolio by implementing bold strategies that bring to life the ambitious goals identified in the Academic Strategic Plan.
Syracuse will invest in our people, our academics and our future by providing the tools, resources and entrepreneurial environment necessary to fuel discovery and forward-thinking innovation.
Accelerating discovery and innovation across our campus community in a climate that sparks creativity, cultivates curiosity and drives intellectual excellence will position our students, faculty and staff for success as they identify solutions today that address tomorrow’s pressing global challenges.
Advancing a campus community that empowers and supports its faculty in their pursuit of new knowledge through research, scholarship and creative work by:
- Recruiting, hiring and retaining exceptional faculty scholars:
- Hiring 100 additional faculty over the next five years across all academic disciplines to support the academic strategic plans developed and established by the schools and colleges.
- Allocating resources to retain outstanding faculty.
- Diversifying our faculty by providing deans the funding necessary to attract top faculty candidates from underrepresented populations.
- Investing in hiring to support the robust portfolios of our faculty scholars, such as grant writers, research staff and funding facilitators.
- Incentivizing faculty—via the Faculty Innovation and Discovery Fund—to pursue research, scholarship and creative work outside the core mission of their department to create new interdisciplinary collaborations.
- Building a robust Office of Research under Vice President for Research John Liu that offers tangible support to faculty from all disciplines who are pursuing grants, awards and other sponsored funding opportunities.
- Launching a communications initiative that focuses on further promoting faculty research, scholarship and creative work to internal and external audiences to create greater awareness of the depth and breadth of work being done by Syracuse’s faculty scholars.
Enhancing research, scholarship and creative work across all schools and colleges to connect experiential learning opportunities with student outcomes by:
- Empowering faculty to develop new undergraduate research experiences to ensure every Syracuse student has the opportunity to participate in research, scholarship or creative work regardless of academic discipline.
- Providing development opportunities to faculty at all stages of their careers to create curricula that meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body via a more hands-on learning approach.
- Creating a new Faculty Committee on Interdisciplinarity, charged with identifying and recommending investments in areas of study that integrate faculty scholars from several academic disciplines.
- Developing a mentor/mentee program that connects faculty scholars with students interested in pursuing research, scholarship or creative work in the faculty member’s area of expertise.
Nurturing and growing the campuswide culture of continuous innovation to incentivize students, faculty and staff to accelerate innovation from within by:
- Creating the Faculty Fellowship Program in Innovation and Entrepreneurship that supports a one-year faculty immersion experience—for faculty across all academic disciplines—in innovation and entrepreneurship.
- Investing in the creation of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Faculty Development Program designed to assist faculty members with integrating the principles of innovation and entrepreneurship into their teaching, research, scholarship and creative work.
- Directing funds to rebuild and energize a technology transfer program focused across the entire academic enterprise, not solely within traditional STEM fields.
- Launching the SU Innovator, an annual challenge, where teams consisting of students, faculty and staff present their most promising discoveries and ventures at a culminating colloquium where winners are awarded resources to take their ideas to the next stage.
- Building on the success of the Blackstone Launchpad by seeking external donors to provide further funding to support the advancement of student, faculty and staff innovations.
Student Stories: