Vision

The way forward is not yet defined. The future is ours for the making.

This mindset has inspired Lehigh University—and driven our excellence—from the very beginning.

We are a community of Future Makers–people who are inspired to think deeply and create grounded, pragmatic solutions through our research and scholarship. We are located in a historical global epicenter for innovation, and we carry that energy forward in our work today.

Together, we must meet the needs of a dynamic world by prioritizing innovative, student-centric and interdisciplinary approaches to education and research. We seek to understand the intersection of technology and human work and embrace disruption to build a better future. We must search for knowledge to identify, understand and solve real-world problems, which will, in turn, redefine the impact and place of higher education in our world.

Our students, faculty, staff and alumni are the people who will help to make the future. Our strategic plan, Inspiring the Future Makers, builds on the investments and work of the past decade, which expanded our reach, made clear our commitment to support a diverse, equitable and inclusive community, and established a flourishing new College of Health.

Taking pride in Lehigh's strengths in interdisciplinary education and research and a strong sense of community, our plan articulates a shared vision for new directions and bold possibilities. It will continuously evolve through implementation to be responsive to our changing world. Developed with the input and support of our community, it presents our aspirations and goals—goals designed to help Lehigh lead in what we do best.

The way forward is not yet defined.

The future is ours for the making.

Joseph J. Helble ’82
President of Lehigh University

Student working in a lab

Guiding Future Makers.

Each goal and initiative set forth in the strategic plan is driven by excellence—ensuring that Future Makers grow as our world continues to evolve.

Our Future.
Our Lehigh.

To establish where we’re going, we built on who we are, and where we’ve been.

Lehigh’s last comprehensive strategic plan, Advancing Our Intellectual Footprint, served as our foundation. Informed by our past successes and learnings, university leadership and four working groups of faculty and staff engaged the entire Lehigh community in developing a plan to guide the university over the next decade.

We listened deeply to the voices in our community.

The strategic planning process, Our Future, Our Lehigh, was an open dialogue on the strategic direction of the university, conducted via both in-person and virtual campus engagement from Fall 2022 through February 2023.

This engagement was structured around four themes: Education With Purpose, Lehigh User Experience, Research for Impact, and Smart Growth. Over the span of 105 sessions attended by faculty, staff and students, 2,444 unique individuals participated in the planning process, producing nearly 350 ideas and 1,000 comments. We surveyed 76,000 Lehigh community members, including alumni and families, to learn what initiatives mattered most to them.

A synthesis of this input informed our new strategic plan: Inspiring the Future Makers.