Charting the Future for Indiana’s Colleges and Universities is a Lilly Endowment initiative designed to help leaders of the state’s 38 colleges and universities engage in thoughtful discernment about the future of their institutions and advance strategic planning and implementation efforts to address key challenges and opportunities.

Through this initiative, the Endowment approved funding that totaled more than $138 million, which includes planning grants, implementation grants and large-scale project grants. The Endowment encouraged college and university leaders to consider collaborative approaches that could help their institutions address challenges and opportunities facing higher education. Those challenges include changing student demographics, expected declines in the traditional college-age population, advancements in online learning and competition from job training programs, among others.

In response to these challenges and opportunities, college and universities proposed a broad array of programs and strategies that include the application of new technologies, intensive and innovative student recruitment and retention efforts, enhanced diversity and inclusion efforts, shared service collaborations, better use of data to improve student outcomes, mental health services for students, and more.  Grants awarded in each of the three phases of Charting the Future are listed and described below.

Charting the Future Funding Awards

• PHASE 1:  Planning grants were made to each of Indiana’s 38 colleges and universities, ranging from up to $100,000 to up to $500,000, depending on the enrollment of the institution.
• PHASE 2:  Implementation grants totaling $62 million were awarded to each of Indiana’s 38 colleges and universities, ranging from $1 million to $5 million, depending on the enrollment of the institution. VIEW LIST
• PHASE 3: Large-scale grants totaling $69.8 million were awarded to support the work of 16 colleges and universities in Indiana, some of which are collaborating on joint projects. The grants range from $2.7 million to $10 million. VIEW LIST