Carolina Next 2022-23

In this occasional series, The Well looks at how staff, faculty and students are turning the words of Carolina Next into reality.

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.

  • Carolina Next 2020 Annual Report. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

    Measuring a year of progress for Carolina Next

    The first report issued since Carolina’s strategic plan was approved last year shows significant progress across the plan’s eight initiatives.

  • 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.”