Annual roadmaps are documents containing the specific objectives for the year to advance the Lehigh Strategy. They are the essential bridge between strategy and day-to-day work, providing a framework for accountability, resource allocation, and continuous progress monitoring.

The following is a more detailed roadmap of the objectives and key projects planned for the year ahead. This roadmap is organized by the individual strategic initiatives but the work to accomplish these goals falls on the collective university community. If there are specific questions about or an interest in any of the objectives, we encourage community members to connect with the Initiative Lead or Project Manager responsible for the corresponding initiative and include the Office of Strategic Planning and Initiatives (inspi@lehigh.edu) on the message. 

Roadmap Items by Strategic Initiative

  • Develop a Belonging Roadmap Steering Committee (comprising faculty, students, staff, and alumni) to refine priorities, ensure cross-campus ownership, and align with existing strategic initiatives
  • Develop Belonging Fellows Program: A cohort-based initiative where faculty/staff receive training in equity-minded practices and serve as peer resources within their departments
  • Create Student Success Pathways Pilot (Pilot with 1-2 cohorts Spring 2026)
  • Develop Inclusive Pedagogy Institute, unifying existing activity
  • Add targets to Belonging Dashboard
  • Sense of belonging index should exceed average for private universities taking the Higher Education Data Sharing (HEDS) Consortium's Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey (Spring 2026). Develop goals for the remainder of the strategy period.
  • Achieve a student response rate of 20% or greater for HEDS Diversity and Equity Campus Climate Survey (Spring 2026)
  • Develop an off-year mini-survey since the HEDS survey is only administered every other year

  • Increase industry engagement as measured by research contracts and expenditures
  • Develop a “front door” for corporate partnerships
  • Develop cases for philanthropy for the upper floors of HST and the associated research groups
  • Identify and advance other non-federal sources of funding
  • Conduct second phase of internal grants ROI analysis (smaller programs)
  • Pilot and advance AI support for research administration
  • Continue to develop a research media/communications strategy in conjunction with UCPA
  • Assess faculty needs/opportunities to expand the use of AI in their research work
  • Maintain the number of research proposals submitted at AY24-25 level

  • Identify three areas of focus for comprehensive application of AI to Lehigh operations
  • Implement Lehigh Pass (mobile credentialing/Transact project) and 25Live (room utilization)
  • Policy Repository Phase 2: Enhance usability, search, discovery, and update cadence
  • Identify and Implement Key "Reimagining Recruitment"  recommendations
  • Continue FutureReady (Banner to SaaS) Project - modernization of core student information systems, software, and services
  • In partnership with F&A: Implement key recommendations from Chart of Accounts review projects and Implement Hawk-I as replacement to Desktop Finance
  • Improve forecasting of undergraduate and graduate enrollments based on new enrollment model
  • Develop a Forms Ecosystem

  • Collaborate with leaders to define and document unit-specific information ensuring that each unit identifies three priorities
  • Establish a clear, transparent process to prioritize which data sources are added to the data lake and in what order, ensuring alignment with institutional needs
  • Advance the Data Lake by integrating high-value data sets to enable more efficient and wider access to this information for analysis and informed decision-making. Currently identified priorities include: Handshake touchpoints; athletics activities and club sports data; student engagement data
  • Enhance hiring/onboarding process to clarify needed data skills and access for all employees in PDs, as positions become open or upon reclassification. Provide information about data access and training on specific data tools during onboarding.
  • Upskill staff in areas of data analysis, visualization, and data informed decision making through Communities of Practice, data trainings, and targeted OID consultations

  • Implement the communications action plan to leverage the Community and Economic Impact Report
  • Implementation of the Board Framework and support plan. Utilize our Board members (LU folks on community boards) to invite key community leaders to LU events (compelling perspectives, athletics, Kenner, etc)
  • Explore the creation of an Enhancing the Bethlehem Experience Advisory Board to deepen our community ties
  • Conduct Year 3 Sentiment Community Survey with a goal of increasing scores in trust and likelihood to recommend
  • Actively engage in the development of the Southside Arts District 10-year Strategic Plan
  • Sunset GoldPlus and publicize new digital platform for students engagement in SouthSide
  • Grow first-year applications from Lehigh Valley high schools by 10% and publicize the increase in LV students receiving LU scholarships in local media
  • Support Athletics, Zoellner and LUAG community engagement plans (Distribute >2,000 tickets; Distribute >200 Zoellner tickets; Increase community visitor traffic at LUAG
  • Create a plan for a day of community engagement ex. Cal Day, Maryland Day - to be held AY 26-27

  • Define outcomes for all graduate programs
  • Increase Domestic first-year graduate enrollment by 25%
  • Increase applicants (30% increase) and decrease decision timeline (attain an avg. of 40 days)
  • Increase to 85% placement of all students within 6 months across all colleges and degree levels (presently 82%)
  • Engagement of faculty in student success, set target for career development integration into programming (Go from 30% (in AY 2024/5) to 50% of programs (AY 2025/6) implement career development into programming)
  • Three doctoral programs commit to adopting formal professional development requirements (tracks) by AY 2026/27
  • Implement timeline and structure for bringing a graduate program to market, identify new opportunities for program development for 2027 approval, and identify and resource at least 1 new CEU/PD opportunity for 2026
  • Implement Structure/policy for grad program reviews and develop Dashboard for reporting program review outcomes in collaboration with OID 

  • Maintain overall external research funding and expand non-federal external support of research by 25%
  • Implement Provost guidance for Public Facing Work
  • Make decision regarding joint faculty appointments between URCs and departments
  • Publicize expanded research metrics (collaborate with OID)
  • Successfully stand up the URCs (establish processes, staffing, and budget)

  • Announce and implement the AI readiness promise
  • Develop “The Lehigh Principles” for education in the age of AI
  • Hire Vice Provost for Educational Innovation & Assessment
  • Define and communicate clear vision and strategic priorities of the OEIA to campus
  • Complete and assess ENGR095 pilot with 70 students as part of the broader implementation of the First Year Rossin Experience (FYRE)
  • Hire Educational Innovation Teaching Full Professor
  • Train a cohort of faculty via Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) and evaluate their experience

  • Increase retention
    • First-year undergraduate student retention to 95%
    • Second year undergraduate student retention to 97.5%
    • Third year undergraduate student retention to 98.5%
  • Pilot a Sense of Purpose Survey (that assesses academic and non-academic contributions to Sense of Purpose) in conjunction with OID
  • Move forward creation and approval of IHE IC program
  • Celebrate successes of interdisciplinary programs in a meaningful way
  • Address policies and practices that create barriers for interdisciplinary undergraduate programs from faculty, staff, and student perspectives, and propose a set of recommendations
  • Complete and assess year one of the Explore Lehigh interdisciplinary semester pilot cohort
  • Proceed with plans for new undergraduate housing

  • Advance activation by increasing average daily users by 15%
  • Assess the viability of graduate housing
  • Create/market paths on mountain or in Forest Park for near term use
  • In coordination with An Expanded and Enhanced Research Environment: Define vision for corporate presence on Mountaintop and develop the “value proposition” for corporations to partner with us at Mountaintop
  • Move CAT Modeling and RTA to Mountaintop