Updating Carolina Next

Carolina’s leadership spent the past nine months revising the University’s strategic plan, Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened racial tensions. This series provides an overview of how the strategic plan has changed and why.

  • Rick Wernoski at Old Well

    Optimizing the University’s operations

    The work of this strategic initiative facilitates the success of the other seven Carolina Next initiatives and their high-impact opportunities across the University.

  • Innovation with purpose

    Carolina’s sixth strategic initiative — Serve to Benefit Society — takes an entrepreneurial approach to solving the most challenging problems here and around the world.

  • photo collage featuring a close-up of lab scientist's hands as he pipettes liquid into a tube; woman carrying crab traps in a marshy area at dusk; a sculpture of a person with a load of cargo on her head.

    Creating conditions for discovery

    Initiative 4 from the University’s strategic plan addresses the importance of exploring new ideas, solving problems and filling gaps in human knowledge.

  • Becci Menghini by the Old Well

    Enabling career development

    The third strategic initiative in Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good focuses on faculty, staff, students and alumni.

  • Scenes featuring students studying on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on February 9, 2021. (Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

    Ensuring student success

    As part of the Carolina Next strategic plan, the University is better preparing students to be successful in a data-driven world.

  • Championing civil discourse

    In a politically polarized era, the University has pledged to promote democracy in the state, the nation and around the globe as part of the Carolina Next strategic plan.

  • Global and growing

    As outlined in Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good, the University builds on its strong international partnerships and an array of programs to guarantee access to a global education for all students.

  • Three students walk across campus near the Old Well.

    Community comes first

    As the top priority in Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good, the Build Our Community Together initiative involves us all.

  • Bob Blouin and Lynn Williford

    Updating Carolina Next

    Last spring, University leaders reexamined several of the eight strategic initiatives in light of COVID-19 and heightened racial tensions. Bob Blouin and Lynn Williford discuss Carolina’s “living, breathing, evolving strategic plan.”