Strategic Pillar II
Research Excellence
150 Forward Reaching Higher Activation
To support Research Excellence, the strategic plan activation includes a transformational goal, a roadmap to achieving that goal by catalyzing faculty success and growing five research priority areas with the support of the transformation management office.
Transformational Goal
Reach $500 million in annual research expenditures by 2032
Roadmap to Success
Grow research in five key areas.
This includes college and unit-level plans, disciplined investment and the growth of priority research areas while supporting all of the university’s research, scholarship and creative endeavors.
Priority Growth Areas for Research
Support for data-enabled decision making
Data optimization across campus will allow for improved data-enabled decision-making, with shared dashboards that provide better visibility into performance, faster risk assessment and timely adjustments.
Focused Initiative Areas
Initiative leads for each area coordinate strategy, implementation and progress with executive sponsors and the Transformation Management Office to ensure success.
- College and Division productivity growth
- Faculty expansion
- Centers and Institutes activation
- University-wide research support
Transformation Management Office (TMO)
Supports the full activation of the three pillars by ensuring strategic alignment, coordinating campuswide collaborations, tracking and reporting milestones, and accelerating the work.
Research Excellence Goals
A comprehensive research university with significant emerging strength in applied research, the University of Arkansas relentlessly pursues its land grant mission by promoting knowledge creation, scientific inquiry and creative works.
We seek to:
- Attain a lasting reputation for deep faculty expertise, high quality education and research outputs.
- Align the research enterprise with society's needs, and the economy across the region, state, nation and world - including research commercialization, workforce training, and other economic and cultural development that advances all Arkansans.
- Achieve a sustainable, shared research enterprise that adopts and develops best practices in: research administration; growing research facility size and support; faculty recruitment, retention, and success; graduate education; and undergraduate participation in the research enterprise.
Transformational Goal
Reach $500 million in annual research expenditures by 2032***
Research Excellence Goals:
- Increase research expenditures
- Increase scholarly productivity percentile, an algorithm that combines citations, books, chapters, patents, and trials among other measures relative to the size of the faculty
- Regularly attain highly prestigious faculty awards
- Increase patent production-to-expenditure ratio and technology transfer
- Improve retention of faculty
- Grow graduate student enrollment by 2,000***
- Increase the number of doctoral students
***Refined or added as a part of Phase III: 150 Forward Reaching Higher activation.
We are among the top research universities in the nation with $252.9 million in research expenditures (FY25). As a public land-grant university and R1 flagship institution, we support all faculty in all disciplines to create knowledge that enriches Arkansas and the nation. Our research success is supported by our unprecedented investments in our research enterprise including three leading-edge applied research facilities that have opened in the last few years – the Institute for Integrative and Innovative Research (I³R), the Multi-User Silicon Carbide Research and Fabrication Facility (MUSiC), and the Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation.
Research Excellence Metrics