Northwestern’s Strategic Vision

Northwestern’s Strategic Vision

By 2030, Northwestern will be a nationally recognized voice that shapes society and speaks into contemporary culture, influences how people think, and equips Christian leaders for lives of purpose, service, and civic engagement through the transforming power and platform of Christian higher education and Christian media.

Northwestern’s strategic vision and plan draws from Jeremiah 29:4-7. In this text, Jeremiah exhorted God’s people to seek the peace and prosperity (literally the “welfare” or “shalom”) of Babylon despite their captivity and hostile relationship with their Babylonian captors. Under oppressive circumstances, God poured out His love on His people and extended His grace and goodness to Babylon, lost as they were. This passage offers a fitting context that, in many ways, describes our world today and our Christian experience in it. While some have proposed that Christians retreat from the world, the Gospel of God’s transforming grace compels us to confidently engage with and go into the world.

The University of Northwestern will operate with a purpose-driven and practitioner-oriented posture, preparing leaders with exceptional intellect, ingenuity, and spiritual maturity to shape culture, solve real-world problems, heal the hurting, and speak as compelling and prophetic voices into the current issues and concerns of the world through the lens of Scripture and a biblical worldview. While we will continue to focus our core undergraduate experience around our physical campus and in life-on-life Christ-centered community, we will also innovate to meet the growing demands of flexible learning through online modalities, serving students in associate, undergraduate, and graduate degree programs.

Likewise, Northwestern Media will link arms with the University of Northwestern to create an expanded national and international media enterprise, amplifying the Gospel and fulfilling the Great Commission through every media channel and professional media vocation. Together with the university, Northwestern Media will not only distribute content, but also prepare and place best-in-class content creators, media innovators, industry executives, and technical experts. We live in a media-saturated world. Therefore, Northwestern Media and the University of Northwestern will collaborate to become a nationally recognized voice, determined to shape the direction of society and contemporary culture by influencing how people think and preparing them for lives of leadership and service.

Northwestern will become fiscally resilient, flourishing through operational innovation, collaboration, strong fiscal discipline, low debt, and conservative financial modeling and planning. Northwestern faculty and staff will be well-paid, our buildings will reflect careful aesthetic stewardship of our historical campus, and our academic programs and co-curricular experience will be riveted on developing the whole person to produce God-honoring leaders capable of living out Northwestern’s mission for the entirety of their lives in their homes, churches, communities, and around the world.

Corbin Hoornbeek, Ph.D.

President