Strategy One
Focus on Healthcare
The urgent need for healthcare workers, from nurses to epidemiologists, has never been more clear. Loyola must build on the significant investment made in the renovation of Monroe Hall and its state-of-the-art instructional labs. We will launch an undergraduate, pre-licensure nursing program, an accelerated BSN program, and an undergraduate public health major.
Expand and Improve Online Learning
It is not yet clear what impact the pandemic will have on the market for online degrees, but it has clearly (a) proved the legitimacy and rigor of online learning and (b) created enormous disruption of job markets and the need for many to pivot, retrain, and gain credentials. The overnight shift to virtual learning will move the worlds of online and traditional “on ground” learning permanently closer together.
- Loyola should do more to own our backyard and become a regional leader in online education.
- Loyola has learned how to create a more engaged experience for online students outside of the classroom, and should now provide more high impact learning experiences to attract and retain online students.
- We will expand the availability of creative hybrid programs, particularly in business and law.
- We will do better to determine the right mix of online programs to build on our strengths. We will improve the quality of our online pedagogy and address the specific learning needs of older students. We will bring more of the marketing and admissions infrastructure in-house.
Launch City College
We will resurrect City College to greatly expand educational access and opportunity for our region, through workforce development partnerships, continuing education and certificate programs that can be stacked into degrees. City College will function as an incubator, a school where we can be more nimble and innovative. We must anticipate the future of education as well as the future of work in order to serve the educational needs of our region during a time of great economic disruption.
Make Purposeful Choices about Academic Programs
Driven by market data and our own mission, we will make choices every year about the right mix of academic programs to sustain us. With particular focus on new graduate and professional programs, we will prioritize and grow programs that make clear our courage and creativity, focusing on relevance and innovation. And like any healthy institution, we will also make hard decisions about where we may need to shrink in order to make room for growth.