Work is well underway to implement the Lewis Katz School of Medicine’s ambitious new strategic plan, Inspiring Excellence: 2024-2029. The plan is the result of a year of collaboration and inclusive engagement of the entire Katz community, including faculty, staff, and students, alongside Temple University, Temple Health and school advisory and alumni boards, as well its external communities. Developed in alignment with strategic priorities for both Temple University and Temple University Health System, Inspiring Excellence is driven by a vision of a big and bold future that harnesses the unlimited potential and passion deeply embedded within the community and honors a long history of valuing and embracing diversity and health equity.

“This plan charts Katz’s future, keeping us on the cutting-edge of education, discovery, and clinical care while building new practices and platforms to enrich and enhance our work,” said Amy J. Goldberg, MD, FACS, the Marjorie Joy Katz Dean. “The time, talent and passion that went into its development is really apparent, and I am excited for what lies ahead.”

Mission and Vision

Katz’s mission and vision statements, crafted collaboratively with input from over 150 individuals across the school community, emphasize its core tenets of responsiveness, inclusion, innovation, excellence, and commitment to social change in all mission areas. These inspirational statements were formulated to represent the Katz community, articulate key beliefs about the future and will serve as directional statements for the organization’s journey forward.

Mission: Align with our diverse communities to advance medicine and improve health through education, research, training, and development of the next generation of clinicians, educators, and scientists.

Vision: The Lewis Katz School of Medicine will inspire a new standard of excellence in education and research and lead social change in medicine.

“Our new mission and vision form the foundation of the school’s strategic direction,” said Dean Goldberg. “My leadership meetings now lead off with these statements, and not Kyle Schwarber… a reminder of why we do what we do, and how we need to think big and bold. I encourage all our leaders within the school to do the same.”

Continuing to Move the Needle

Since the development phase of the strategic plan began over a year ago, the school has made meaningful progress against our strategic goals, and with the launch of Inspiring Excellence and its implementation, that momentum has a roadmap.

Guided by the plan’s goals, its strategic initiatives are the actionable projects and programs that will be implemented in phases, with completion by 2029. Vetted by the Katz community during the strategic planning retreat in January, the initiatives provide clear guidance while fostering creativity and innovative thinking in their execution.

Led by Dean Goldberg and comprised of senior leaders across Katz faculty and staff, the plan’s steering committee is overseeing the implementation, in close collaboration with individual workgroups supporting each strategic initiative:

• New Regional Medical Campus: Establish a new regional medical campus with a clinical partner, which will open doors to new geographies and partnerships beyond education.
• Programs That Attract and Support Diverse Students: Enhance program offerings to attract and support diverse students by expanding outreach, creating cost-effective pathways for medical education, and increasing scholarship opportunities to alleviate student debt burdens.
• Education Innovation Hub: Create a hub focused on testing, scaling, and adopting effective innovations through pilot projects and exploring diverse uses of technology in education. This hub will prepare faculty, staff, and students to interact with emerging technologies.
• Dynamic and Collaborative Research Environment: Foster a dynamic and collaborative research environment through enhanced collaboration, communication, and resource access, driving impactful advancements across disciplines.
• Redesign of the Faculty and Staff Journeys: Redesign faculty and staff journeys to align with strategic goals, fostering professional development, career advancement, and a sense of community through interdisciplinary engagement and mentorship initiatives.
• Temple Connects: Increase community engagement and foster a sense of belonging, utilizing technology-supported approaches to improve satisfaction, connection, resilience, and responsiveness.
• Safety, Health, and Wellness: Improve safety, health, and wellness by integrating these values into Katz’s culture, policies, and operations.

Representing a comprehensive cross section of departments, roles and responsibilities across the school, workgroups began meeting earlier this summer to refine the tactics within each initiative and begin developing implementation plans that will inform and help guide the work in each area over the next five years. Once the plans are developed, workgroups will convene and support teams across the school for tactical execution. Each workgroup is led by two group champions tasked with managing the group’s work, providing feedback, and reporting back to the steering committee.

Exploring the Plan

Inspiring Excellence is a dynamic plan built to guide the future while adapting and flexing to meet the needs of our school and communities in real time. The Inspiring Excellence hub on the Katz portal has been designed the same way.

The hub’s homepage features high-level information about the plan’s elements and oversight, and each strategic initiative is housed within its own sub-section. As plans are developed and updates are made, these sections will grow accordingly. The Inspiring Excellence hub is publicly accessible, so all members of the Katz community, including alumni, friends and prospective students and faculty can engage with the plan and its components.