Chancellor Crabtree launched a strategic planning process, led by Provost Robert Holub, in November 2007 “to create a campus firmly committed to academic and scholarly excellence.” The overall goal was to become one of the nation’s best public research universities. The initiation of the process followed the presentation of President John Petersen’s institutional plan to the board of trustees on November 9 and utilized the framework set by the UT system, considering access and success, economic development and research, and outreach and globalization.
The plan was to assume expansion of student enrollment to thirty-three thousand by the end of the decade, and to examine methods of increasing faculty, staff, housing, and research funding. Planning was directed to enhancing the status of UT as a national university, as well as to fostering intercultural and international perspectives.