Report of the N|150 Commission

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln attracts bold thinkers in the quest for knowledge and the search for truths greater than ourselves. Nebraska provides one of the world’s premier learning environments because we:

• Seek new ways of knowing, understanding, and improving our world;
• Empower our students to co-create their learning experiences;
• Instill a life-long desire to learn, inquire, and explore; and
• Ensure a diverse and inclusive culture where every person and every interaction matter.

Nebraska students co-create their experience

The signature of a Nebraska education is common transformative learning experiences that equip each student for their future. Working together with faculty, staff, and community members our students co-create experiences that spark curiosity, lead to demonstrated achievement, and deepen the capacity for analysis and reflection.

Students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are:

• Builders who shape their own future and the future of society;
• Includers who participate in a compassionate community that encourages and promotes the well-being of every member of the community;
• Connectors who engage people and ideas in meaningful and constructive ways;
• Influencers who develop and sustain diverse personal and professional networks across the university and the community; and
• Explorers with the capacity for deep, meaningful reflection and self-awareness.

Our students are, first and foremost, learners whose intellectual progress extends throughout their lives based on the active role they take in their own, co-created experiences, including:

• Experiential learning for all Nebraska students - undergraduates, graduate, and professional students alike;
• Dedicated, long-term research experiences;
• Cohort-based interdisciplinary learning groups of 25 or fewer students - led by students;
• Opportunities for community-based research in every college.

Through these experiences and others, every student at Nebraska benefits from the purposeful integration of curricular, co-curricular, and community experiences aimed at developing their skills in critical thinking, imaginative creativity, communication, social consciousness and resilience. Common course experiences complement the co-created aspects of student learning with:

• A University 150 Innovation Academy—emphasizing imagination, creative expression, and the convergence of disciplinary and design thinking;
• A series of University 150 Common Courses on broad concepts, such as “The Pursuit of Happiness,” “What is Well-Being?” “Performing Arts and a Better Life,” “Being Human in the Digital Age.”
• A series of certificates (taken in place of or in addition to disciplinary studies,) demonstrating sets of skills, methodologies, aptitudes, and perspectives.

Our Research Transforms Lives and Learning

By advancing knowledge, solving the world’s challenges, and deepening our understanding of humanity, we enhance quality of life in the state of Nebraska and beyond. By connecting everything we do to our research, scholarship, and creative activity, our innovations shape the education we provide to undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

To transform lives and learning we:

• Realign and connect all aspects of academic, student, and business affairs to our research, scholarship, and creative activity;
• For the next 20 years commit sizable resources to grand challenges that require the work of multiple disciplines to achieve breakthroughs in critical areas;
• Emphasize basic and translational research, humanistic inquiry, and creative activity to advance knowledge, promote public good, and stimulate economic growth;
• Engage with local, national, and international partners in mutually-beneficial ways that enhance innovation and our overall capacity for research, scholarship, and creative activity;
• Transform and strengthen policies and structures to stimulate interdisciplinary, synergistic research, scholarship, and creative activity, including:
  • Commit a certain percentage of strategic research investments and/or new tenure-track hires to interdisciplinary research.
  • Create and incubate new emerging areas of strength in research, scholarship, and creative activity.
  • Build a Global Center for Open Science/Research and sharing of new knowledge.

At Nebraska we are known for a culture of intensive research collaboration and inventiveness, and for producing and disseminating research of exceptional quality and significance. Emphasizing entrepreneurial partnerships on and off campus, we tailor our research and creative activity around and through multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborations. We recognize and support the full capacity of students as participants and colleagues in ongoing research at the university. Doctoral students, in particular, play a crucial role in our research, scholarship, and creative activity. We aim to:

• Drive new interdisciplinary efforts by establishing new centers and reviewing current ones around five-year strategic assessment and re-direction cycles;
• Offer compensation, career development, and research opportunities for graduate students and Post-Doctoral Fellows that surpass norms for the top 50 U.S. research universities; and
• Emphasize basic research that connects globally and translational research that builds partnerships for public good and economic growth; and
• Develop all students as research partners by continually engaging them in research and creative activity that enhances lives and learning in Nebraska and beyond.

Every Person and Every Interaction Matter

We aim to lead U.S. public universities in affordability and accessibility to a world-class education, inviting students from Nebraska, the nation, and world to join us in creating a better life. In our community we are committed to ensuring a deep appreciation for diversity, inclusive excellence, and the contributions of each individual to the greater good. We attract, educate, and support students whose talent and work ethic will shape their communities for decades to come.

To lead in affordability and accessibility we:

• Become the first university to offer one base tuition for all—in state or out-of-state—to welcome students from across the country and around the world who want to join our university and whose creativity and determination will enrich Nebraska.

To ensure that Every Person and Every Interaction Matter we:

• Embed our emphasis on excellence in diversity and inclusion in all that we do and all that we hope to do, specifically
  • Increase the recruitment, retention, and success of domestic and globally diverse students, staff, and faculty members;
  • Provide everyone at UNL with meaningful and ongoing opportunities to develop and grow, personally and professionally, in a culture focused on inclusive excellence;
  • Promote research and practice around issues of diversity and inclusion that provide expertise to institutions and communities on inclusive approaches for solving problems;
  • Encourage individuals, programs, and units to cooperate in interdisciplinary activities that foster inclusion, innovation, and increase global prestige of the University of Nebraska’s inclusive approaches for solving state, national, and global problems;
  • Ensure that all students engage in meaningful experiences around diversity and inclusion before graduation; and
  • Make clear our commitment to diversity and inclusion within all campus communications, including public postings, job descriptions and offers, mission statements, syllabi, evaluations, social media platforms, and buildings.
• Inspire and empower everyone to create and sustain pathways and networks that enable everyone to belong, interact, and thrive, including
  • Create a strong sense of individual and team identity that leverages and builds on the University’s strengths; and
  • Create intentional success pathways and professional development opportunities to encourage each member of our staff, faculty, and administration to fully develop their talents.
• Develop and enhance the institutional structures and culture for participative decision-making that give meaningful voice to each member of the University community;
  • Develop a University Council that fosters the holistic well-being and belonging of each team member as well as the success of the University; and
• Invigorate the faculty’s role as intellectual and community leaders, especially through shared governance (in the Faculty Senate and other bodies).

Engagement Builds Communities

We serve as a catalyst for growth, prosperity, and cultural enrichment for Nebraska and beyond in ways that redefine relationships between 21st century research universities and their communities.

We create a university without walls by:

• Viewing every community across Nebraska as a key part of the University’s extended campus for the purpose of establishing engaged learning and research opportunities that advance the mutual interests of the community and the University;
• Expanding the experience of every student beyond their classrooms, laboratories, and studios;
• Ensuring that every student has an experiential learning opportunity and credential these learning experiences in innovative ways that convey to employers and other institutions of higher learning the knowledge and skills students gain as a result; and
• Implementing a system of capstone experiences for students and empowering them to pitch capstone experiences in collaboration with faculty, staff, alumni, and community members.

We bring Nebraska to the world, and we bring the world to Nebraska by creating a university where students, faculty, staff and alumni are actively engaged across Nebraska and beyond. To accomplish this, we embrace opportunities to strengthen our relationship with people and organizations throughout the communities we serve. The University creates a culture of engagement and partnership that generates genuine mutual benefit both in Nebraska and across the globe while creating extraordinary opportunities for students, alumni, industry, community partners, faculty and staff. To redefine relationships between the university and our communities we:

• Build and implement an initiative promoting substantive lifetime student engagement [i.e. "Huskers for life"];
• Establish meaningful connections with business partners that help align relevant research with societal needs and stimulate the creation of knowledge-economy jobs;
• Build and support experiential learning facilities to allow diverse groups of people to more naturally mesh and collaborate;
• Make engagement a fundamental part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s culture;
• Establish a university-level office and council charged with championing the engagement mission;
• Support a strong mentorship culture within the university and with our partners; and
• Support a campus-wide ethos of informed risk taking.

To achieve the N|150 mission and vision, and to implement these core goals, the University ensures that:

The operations and infrastructure of the University are dynamically structured, optimized, and accessible to continually build excellence and ensure a safe, sustainable, and inclusive environment. We facilitate interactions, engagement, and innovation in physical and virtual spaces and through technology for the global Nebraska community of life-long learners.

To make the University dynamically structured, optimized, and accessible we:

• Engage all stakeholders to collaboratively align organizational structures and policies with the N|150 vison and mission;
• Connect learners wherever they are by leveraging technology and our physical and virtual spaces;
• Allocate resources transparently and incentivize actions that align with the mission, goals and values of the University;
• Empower decision making at the appropriate levels through input from our diverse colleagues; and
• Invest resources intelligently and sustainably with an emphasis on continuous improvement through anticipating needs and delivering service.
• Value and promote the environmental, social, and economic well-being of Nebraska through the socially responsible stewardship of natural resources and creation of resilient systems that are adaptable and recoverable to short- and long-term environmental and technological changes.

The chancellor will convene a ‘Committee of 15’ to carefully review this report and identify the immediate areas of focus for our campus. Specifically, this group will identify the initial strategies needed to enact the four core aspirations outlined in this report. In addition the committee will propose success indicators for each strategy.

This committee will include the chancellor, N|150 Commission co-chairs, one N|150 chair from each of the 8 committees, the vice chancellors, Faculty Senate and student representatives. In this way we ensure a smooth transition from the ideas in the N|150 process and the selection of next steps.