A new framework for success

At UAB, we are prepared to meet new opportunities and challenges because we plan ahead and sustain strategic growth that has a positive impact on people’s lives.

Forging Ahead, UAB's five-year strategic plan for 2024-2028, builds on the success of our past plans and outlines our mission, vision, values, peers, foundations and pillars, as well as outlines institutional goals and strategies to achieve them, and measurements of success.

The monumental success experienced under previous strategic plans in UAB President Ray L. Watts’ first ten years leading the institution are chronicled in the Spring 2023 UAB Magazine. Forging the Future, UAB’s 2018-2023 strategic plan, produced a new core curriculum, launched a Grand Challenge, led to record-breaking enrollment and research expenditures and unparalleled generosity in giving by donors.

Before that, the UAB21 plan led to notable achievements including the Alabama Drug Discovery Alliance, which is accelerating the efforts to treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, diabetes and kidney disease and more. Subsequent strategic plans expanded the Honors College and created the Blazing Start initiative to give more Birmingham-area high school graduates greater access to UAB educational opportunities.

UAB’s current plan, Forging Ahead was developed over two years in an inclusive process that leveraged the knowledge and expertise of UAB’s most valuable resource – its people. Learn more about how the plan was developed.