UCD STRATEGY 2020-2024
Through our research, our education and the many ways in which we interact with the world around us, universities have a vital role to play in these disruptive times. At UCD, we have both the opportunity and the obligation to ensure that, in everything we do and say, we are contributing to the flourishing of Ireland and the world.
Building on the traditions of the past, we are a university of the future, connected and connecting, engaged and engaging, committed to a sustainable future built on a healthy biosphere.
We will contribute to this sustainable future through our graduates, through our research and through the way we conduct our business. As transactional activities will be increasingly handled electronically, human activity will revolve more and more around creativity, strategic and critical thinking, problem solving and communication.
To respond to these key trends innovatively and proactively, we will adopt four UCD strategic themes which will permeate everything that we do as an institution, guiding the development of our students, our research and our University community.
We will ensure that every member of our community is enabled to achieve their full potential, and we will embrace the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion so that no one is excluded.
Over the last five years UCD has made remarkable progress towards the objectives of the UCD Strategy 2015-2020. We have achieved improvements in student satisfaction; research quality, quantity and impact; student-faculty ratio and gender equality. Notable achievements have been made in the area of engagement, a central theme of that strategy. We have seen extraordinary increases in alumni engagement, industry engagement and global engagement, and a significant increase in philanthropic support. These achievements, made against a backdrop of reduced government funding for Irish universities, were enabled by our building of non-exchequer income.
During the period of the last strategy we moved to a five-year planning horizon, with our projections of student and faculty numbers extended to ten years, informing a strategic campus development plan. We adopted a financial strategy which will see our student-faculty ratio reduced and our infrastructure needs addressed over the period of this strategy. Hence several enablers of this strategy are already well developed. A number of objectives of the last strategy have been substantially achieved, while others, with significant progress already made, remain current and have been retained in this updated strategy.
The progress of UCD over the last five years is a credit to all the members of our University community and to our partners and supporters. We look forward to your continued support of UCD as we embark on this next chapter in the history of a truly extraordinary University.