Building a Better Future

The University Academic Plan (UAP) 2020-2025 is about coming together to make positive change for our students, our campuses, and our local and global communities. 

This UAP is launching at a moment of unprecedented trial for human and planetary health, security, well-being, and understanding. In the midst of both a global pandemic and an international mobilization against anti-Black racism, our York University community has demonstrated extraordinary creativity, solidarity, and dedication to serving the public good while caring for all people, including the most marginalized and vulnerable. As a leading generator of knowledge and exemplar of social responsibility, York seeks to bring expertise from across disciplines to build new tools and strategies to tackle the myriad dimensions of these historic crises. Notwithstanding the restraints imposed by physical distancing, we are truly coming together as a resilient community. In the process, we are proving once again York’s commitment to an enduring and distinctive set of core values:

• We strive for Excellence in fulfilling all aspects of our mission.
• We are Progressive, encouraging open minded inquiry, innovative approaches, and forward looking solutions. 
• We champion Diversity and Inclusivity, embracing differing perspectives, peoples, and ways of knowing, and fostering global fluencies and cross-cultural knowledges. 
• We are passionate about advancing Social Justice and Equity through critical insight, creative problem solving, and socially responsible action. 
• We uphold Sustainability – environmental, social, and fiscal – as a vital compass for decisions and initiatives. 

These values are embedded in York University’s Mission and Vision statements: 

Mission

The mission of York University is the pursuit, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge. We promise excellence in research and teaching in pure, applied, and professional fields. We test the boundaries and structures of knowledge. We cultivate the critical intellect. York University is part of Toronto: we are dynamic, metropolitan, and multi-cultural. York University is part of Canada: we encourage bilingual study, we value diversity. York University is open to the world: we explore global concerns. A community of faculty, students, staff, alumni, and volunteers committed to academic freedom, social justice, accessible education, and collegial self-governance. York University makes innovation its tradition. Tentanda Via: The way must be tried.

Vision

York’s vision is to provide a broad sociodemographic of students with access to a high quality education at a research intensive University that is committed to enhancing the well-being of the communities we serve. 

The Journey to 2020 

After a decade of rapid development York has arrived as a fully comprehensive, research- intensive, multi-campus, urban University. We combine groundbreaking scholarship, discovery, and artistic creation with renowned strengths in community engaged and industry partnered research for maximum social and economic impact. 

We are a full spectrum University, increasingly recognized for excellence in health, engineering, and sciences, while we continue to lead in liberal arts, creative and performing arts, and professional studies. The comprehensive strengths of our Keele campus are enhanced by our bilingual Glendon campus, our downtown professional learning sites devoted to law and business, our management education campus in Hyderabad, India and our eco-campus in Las Nubes, Costa Rica. 

York boasts one of the largest and most diverse undergraduate and graduate student bodies in Canada, almost 18% of whom are now international students. Through the ingenuity of our faculty, we have dramatically grown opportunities for students to access our programs virtually from anywhere in the world, and to learn experientially through community placements, capstone projects, and research internships. Students are embracing new programs in emerging areas like Global Health, Indigenous Studies, Digital Media, and Management of Artificial Intelligence. Our School of Continuing Studies has quickly become one of North America’s largest and most successful, offering cutting-edge and flexible pathways to education for adult learners looking to retool their careers.

Through the growth of Innovation York, we have emerged as a thriving regional hub for entrepreneurship and knowledge mobilization. We value our deep connections to local and global partners, who work with us to contribute to the wellbeing of both people and communities. York University has a global alumni network of over 325,000 people in more than 170 countries, who are making a positive impact on their communities and excelling in every field of human endeavour. 

Our Next Chapter

York is entering a new phase of purposeful expansion in directions that anticipate the needs of future learners, both locally and globally, as well as the evolving needs of society. We reassert our foundational commitment to the arts, humanities, and social sciences not only as fields of inquiry but as modes of apprehending human existence at this critical juncture. In addition, we will launch a new campus in Markham centred on technology and entrepreneurship. We will develop an integrated health precinct with partners in Vaughan. We will take steps to realize the potential of the Lands for Learning at our flagship Keele Campus. We will elevate our international partnerships and profile, and the global connectivity of our research and our graduates. To enable this future-oriented vision, we will invest in robust professional development for our instructors and in the significant renewal of our research and teaching infrastructure, both physical and virtual. 

York has scaled up its health-related teaching, research, and innovation based on a vision of keeping more people healthier, longer. We are well placed over time to establish a medical school aligned with this vision, to serve one of Canada’s fastest growing and most diverse regions through a community-based care model that integrates physicians into broader health and wellbeing promotion teams. 

Focusing on the next five years, our UAP charts a path to positive change in relation to six Priorities that are foundational to York University’s mission, vision, and identity. For each Priority the Plan explains why action is imperative and the key aims that will guide us. Permeating all six Priorities is a theme of coming together as both a precondition and an outcome of fulfilling the Plan. A better future must be rooted in strong relationships – among the members of our own institution, across our multiple campuses, with our closest neighbours and Indigenous communities, and with our burgeoning networks of partners near and far.