Dear Fellow Revs,
Today, we are pleased to share Raising Higher: OneGW in Action, the university’s plan for advancing our strategic framework over the next three years. Shaped by our students, faculty, and staff, it identifies the first set of university-wide initiatives we will undertake together to achieve the framework’s core goals: strengthen student success and grow GW’s research enterprise.
This plan comes at an important moment for GW. As changes across higher education create new challenges and possibilities, the choices we make today will shape our university for years to come. Acting now with purpose and conviction gives us greater ability to shape that future on our own terms. With this plan, we are seizing this moment to build on our distinctive strengths, improve how we work, and direct our collective time, effort, and resources toward the university we aspire to become.
From Shared Vision to Coordinated Action
Last fall, we established three working groups focused on academic and career advising, our interdisciplinary research ecosystem, and distinctive D.C.-based experiences. These groups examined practices at GW and peer institutions, engaged GW community members, and developed bold, forward-looking recommendations grounded in expertise and experience.
We also launched the Foundational Excellence Initiative to identify opportunities to contain costs, generate new revenue, and improve how the university operates in support of our academic mission. Nearly 500 community members participated through interviews, listening sessions, and a web form. Alongside these efforts, the AI@GW mapping exercise identified opportunities and needs related to artificial intelligence across GW.
Together, these efforts produced a substantial set of recommendations to advance our shared priorities. University leadership considered them together, assessing potential impact, connections across recommendations, required resources, and timing. Informed by continued engagement with the university community, this approach helped identify a coordinated set of initiatives that advance our shared ambitions, make thoughtful use of available resources, and strategically sequence the work over the next three years.
Highlights include a new university-wide effort to connect students and faculty with D.C.’s extraordinary resources and partnerships, expanding access and support for hands-on learning, more accessible and improved advising, seed funding to help faculty build research collaborations, and simpler hiring and purchasing processes. These are just a few ways OneGW in Action will strengthen our academic work and improve the experience of students, faculty, and staff.
Some initiatives are already underway; others will kick off in the coming years. We encourage you to explore the full plan to learn more about the work ahead and its anticipated timing.
Moving Forward Together
Advancing these initiatives will require creative leadership and engagement, targeted financial investment, policy and process changes, and the time, expertise, and effort of people across GW. But this is just one part of the broader effort to bring our framework to life. Across the university, colleagues are already advancing efforts that reflect the framework’s priorities and the opportunities within their own schools and units. These contributions are essential to achieving our goals, and we encourage you to consider how your work can help bring our shared vision to life.
As implementation proceeds, we will share progress, new initiatives, and opportunities to participate through the OneGW in Action webpage. The plan will grow and evolve as we learn from our efforts and identify new possibilities.
Thank you to everyone who helped shape this work. Your ideas and commitment have brought us to this moment, and your continued involvement will turn these initiatives into meaningful progress for our students, our scholarship, and our university.
Raise High!
Ellen M. Granberg
President
Edward J. Balleisen
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Professor of History