It’s official. Arts has a new strategic plan: A Future for Humanity: Faculty of Arts Strategic Plan 2023–2030. After several years of development and pandemic disruptions, the final — and now, strongly endorsed — plan features three Priorities for Change: Building Connection through Interdisciplinarity; Effecting Social Impact; and Fostering Student Agency.
“This plan is intended to bring together the ethos of what we are with the aspirations of what we want to be,” writes Dean Sheila Ager in the plan’s preface. She adds that the plan aligns with the University’s current 2020-25 strategic plan and especially the Waterloo at 100 strategic vision.
All faculty and staff members in Arts were invited to endorse the plan via an online ballot that ran from May 1 through May 8. Given that many of the responsibilities for implementation of the plan will fall to both faculty and staff, it was vital that all voices be heard.
At the April 25 Strategic Plan Town Hall, which invited final questions and comments on the proposed plan, the Dean stressed that the new plan stands as our guide for the important next steps of working together to implement our goals and objectives, to engage in refining them as needed, and to measure and report on our progress over the plan’s seven-year span.
Echoing her message within the plan, Dean Ager comments on how recent global events, alongside the strengths and potential of Waterloo Arts, have shaped the priorities of our plan:
“The past few years have shown us it’s time for change. Not only the pandemic, but continued racism, accelerating climate change, economic uncertainty, war, rapid advances in technology, the spread of misinformation, and the roll-back of human rights highlight the vital need for solutions informed by compassion, empathy, and a concern for the well-being of the individual and the community, locally and globally. The Faculty is now in a better position than ever before to bring to bear our talents in exploring, understanding, and improving the condition of humanity and our planet.”
