The Next 150 Strategic Plan identified growing the number of excellent faculty on our campus as a top priority and set aside significant resources to help address that objective. Faculty members represent some of the most important assets of a university.
Affirming our commitment to increase the number of tenure-stream faculty on our campus, Chancellor Jones announced a $50 million multi-year strategic faculty hiring initiative in Sept. 2023 to drive excellence in teaching, innovation and discovery. “When we invest in our faculty, we are investing in our students and in the state of Illinois,” Jones said in a previous massmail message. The research and scholarship of these new faculty will contribute significantly to communities across our entire state and advance our reputation for innovation and impact.
A Strategic Hiring Initiative – Cluster Hire program, announced in April 2023, aims to create opportunities for diverse scholars from across disciplines to collaborate on topics that have the potential to lead to creative solutions to vexing societal problems. Recently, four proposals ranging from climate impacts to neuro-informatics to AI, under the SHI-Cluster Hire program, were selected for funding.
Learn more about the Strategic Hiring Initiative.