Strategic Plan

• Strategic Objective 1.1: Deepen formal research and clinical trial integration with regional healthcare networks and the Greater Cleveland community.
  • Key Performance Indicator (KPI) 1.1a: Increase multi-institutional grant submissions involving regional clinical health system partners (e.g., University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth) 25% over five years.
  • KPI 1.1b: Launch multiple clinical trials that validate our therapeutic discoveries across our local demographic cohorts by 2031.
• Strategic Objective 1.2: Formalize ethical, bidirectional community partnerships that drive public health interventions.
  • KPI 1.2a: Establish Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) for our community advisory board members.
  • KPI 1.2b: Secure at least eight new strategic funding partnerships with non-federal entities specifically targeting regional or international health burdens through implementation science.
  • KPI 1.2c: Improve recognition and access to our resources for our academic and community partners.

• Strategic Objective 2.1: Enhance student and postdoc future-readiness through early, longitudinal career-building support and workforce placement.
  • KPI 2.1a: Maintain >90% trainee participation in the EMBARK program, including timely completion of Individual Development Plans (IDPs).
  • KPI 2.1b: Achieve >80% placement rate of PhD and master’s graduates into desired sector roles (additional training, industry, pharma, policy, administration, academia) within 12 months of graduation.
• Strategic Objective 2.2: Elevate faculty mentoring capability, leadership acumen and upward academic mobility.
  • KPI 2.2a: Achieve >90% participation of primary PhD mentors in Entering Mentoring workshops led by CIMER-trained facilitators.
  • KPI 2.2b: Advance faculty participation in School of Medicine governance through voting, committees and collaborative engagement. Strive for a 5% annual compound growth rate in the number of faculty seeking promotions and volunteering for governance positions.
  • KPI 2.2c: Realize a 30% increase in faculty participation in structured career enhancements (participation in career advancement, leadership programs, promotion of faculty and postdoc awards) by 2030.

• Strategic Objective 3.1: Establish a measurable baseline of safety and belonging while mitigating institutional friction and turnover.
  • KPI 3.1a: Increase the annual School of Medicine Climate Survey response rate by 10% year-over-year to hit a steady target of 50% engagement.
  • KPI 3.1b: Reduce staff and junior faculty turnover rates through targeted wellness and professional development programs.
  • KPI 3.1c: Create an annual School of Medicine mentoring award within each mission to promote a strong mentoring culture
• Strategic Objective 3.2: Recruit, develop and retain faculty, staff and students to support excellence.
  • KPI 3.2a: Implement onboarding orientations to each group. 
  • KPI 3.2b: Increase emphasis on national awards for faculty, postdocs, students and staff.

• Strategic Objective 4.1: Improve competitiveness for external funding through training, review, collaborations and access to advanced technologies. Modernize and centralize core platforms to decrease administrative burden and catalyze high-risk, high-reward discovery.
  • KPI 4.1a: Streamline pilot, individual and collaborative internal grant reviews.
  • KPI 4.1b: Allocate internal seed funding for new initiatives at the faculty and trainee levels, including support for multi-investigator grant application preparation and at least five "Dream Experiment" fellowships or pilot awards annually, tracking a target 5:1 return on investment in subsequent external federal awards.
  • KP1 4.1c: Expand biomaterial biobanks and bioinformatic databases to enhance research
• Strategic Objective 4.2: Expand philanthropic support for research and education 
  • KPI 4.2a: Secure major multi-million-dollar endowments dedicated to scholarship funds (MD, PhD, master’s programs) and neuroscience/cancer therapeutics research by 2031.
  • KPI 4.2b: Grow non-federal research funding assets by 25% overall over the next five years.

• Strategic Objective 5.1: Transcend academic departmental disciplines with cross-disciplinary research ecosystems that transform approaches to complex medical challenges.
  • KPI 5.1a: Establish multiple major cross-departmental and cross-institutional hubs, utilizing the cancer center as an example.
  • KPI 5.1b: Increase cross-departmental co-authorship, multi-PI grant submissions and shared data infrastructure initiatives by 25%.
• Strategic Objective 5.2: Drive engagement and continuous dialogue across distinct institutional stakeholders to unify the School of Medicine ecosystem.
  • KPI 5.2a: Establish a school-wide Steering Committee (comprising faculty, staff, students and alumni) to advise the dean and faculty council on broad-ranging topics in research and education. 
  • KPI 5.2b: Expand and promote annual inter-group collaboration formats (adding topics such as Speed Mentoring, Joint Grand Rounds, Master’s Student Symposia) to achieve increased collaboration.

• Strategic Objective 6.1: Embed cutting-edge computational literacy, AI tools and data science competencies directly into graduate medical and biomedical education and research.
  • KPI 6.1a: Include AI-driven curricular threads across all primary biomedical PhD and master’s programs by 2028.
  • KPI 6.1b: Launch and achieve enrollment of at least 50 trainees annually in the newly established Biomedical Research AI Certificate Program by 2028.
• Strategic Objective 6.2: Accelerate research discovery and clinical predictive modeling through advanced machine learning, computational biology and real-world data (RWD).
  • KPI 6.2a: Increase multi-investigator or center-level grants utilizing AI-driven discovery, digital pathology, or targeted drug discovery platforms by 30% over five years.

Goal: The School of Medicine seeks to be a connector for its large cohort of faculty members, students and staff by providing a vital community where all can flourish. The strategic priorities for the next five years are to improve connectivity and collaboration through professional development programs, strong communication strategies and opportunities to engage and participate in a vibrant community of peers.

Objectives:

• Promote vitality intentionally through improvements in the School of Medicine climate that reflect, amplify and welcome excellence at every level.
• Improve and expand collaboration, communication, dialogue, engagement and connection among faculty, staff and students.
• Recruit, develop, promote and retain faculty, staff and students to support excellence in scholarship broadly defined.

Goal: To focus research and training on understanding, treating, preventing and mitigating the global burden of chronic and untreatable diseases

Objectives:

• Lead in mechanistic brain resilience and neurodegeneration across the lifespan to prevent, detect and treat brain disorders.
• Lead in therapeutic discovery and development in cancer and complex diseases to advance an integrated, technology-enabled engine for discovering, validating and translating next-generation cancer therapeutics.
• Lead in adaptive immune-metabolic systems for precision health to integrate immune, infectious, microbial and metabolic science into a unified adaptive-systems framework that drives precision diagnostics and therapeutics.
• Lead in convergence therapeutics and imaging for precision health integrating therapeutic discovery and development, advanced imaging, AI-enabled methods and GMP CMC to disease-anchored convergence platforms.
• Lead in creating scholarly excellence through a high-performing culture to grow a high-impact research enterprise by cultivating an excellence-driven, academic climate where faculty, staff and trainees are engaged, psychologically safe and connected across departments and campuses.
• Lead in investing in enabling and emerging technologies through cost-effective and shared resources.
• Lead in cancer neuroscience by exploiting the bidirectional interactions between the nervous system and cancer—from primary brain tumors to peripheral malignancies.

Goal: Clinical translational research benefits from the Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative (CTSC), which catalyzes high-quality clinical and translational science and transformative research to positively impact the health of those in Northeast Ohio and beyond. As a collaborative of multiple regional academic healthcare institutions, our impact is demonstrated across many categories: clinical and medical, community and public health, economic, as well as policy benefits.

Objectives:

• Expand research education and scientific communication about clinical and translational research at all levels.
• Plan timely dissemination of validated translational research findings from project inception to magnify impact.
• Train a robust workforce at all levels (including community-based liaisons) who represent the community and academia.
• Develop innovative methods for clinical and translational research to increase the participation of a cross-section of community members locally and across the U.S. in pivotal national clinical trials
• Establish and expand a community engagement network for clinical and translational research to position CWRU as the preferred academic collaborator with local and national community organizations.

Objectives:

• Increase population and community health collaborations within the School of Medicine and across the university.
• Develop systems that accelerate interdisciplinary, community-engaged research.
• Increase engagement with Greater Cleveland communities.
• Improve institutional incentives for increasing interdisciplinary and community collaborations to improve regional health.
• Enhance competitiveness for and visibility of large, multi-PI interdisciplinary grants.
• Advance implementation science for regional health.

Goal: The Office of Medical Education promotes best practice in preparing clinicians (MD, PA, MSA) for the complexities of today’s healthcare environment. Our strategic priorities are to optimize student success while providing personalized learning that balances high-tech with high-touch and data-informed decisions with relationship-centered care that leads to adaptive expertise in interprofessional teams.

Objectives:

• Cultivate a more accessible, technologically-enabled learning environment that accelerates and deepens learning while maximizing student success (MD, MSA, PA) and aligning educational outcomes with workforce needs and system readiness.
• Innovate the curriculum to balance high-tech personalized learning with high-touch relationship-centered patient care and humanistic practice that intentionally includes managing difficult, complex and nuanced problems.
• Integrate artificial intelligence, data science and information sciences into the curriculum to build digital literacy and enhance personalized feedback while leveraging efficiencies.
• Strengthen the longitudinal career arc through professional identity formation, reflection, self-regulated learning and medical ethics—all focused on achieving master adaptive expertise.
• Develop accurate, fair and reliable assessment practices that provide authentic high-value data on student performance across the core competencies.
• Ensure organizational integration and recognized value of CWRU School of Medicine with clinical and community partners through intentional engagement and mutual benefits with an emphasis on best practice learning, coaching, assessment and mentoring in research and clinical programs.
• Aim for a regional reputation in interprofessional education and practice through simulation to realize team-based care that impacts patient outcomes.
• Mitigate rising costs of medical education through cost containment, fundraising, expanded revenue-generating programming and novel scholarship mechanisms.

Goal: The future readiness of graduate students.

Objectives: 

• Elevate each student’s experience and success through career and professional development programming. Deliver longitudinal support throughout each student’s educational journey.
• Provide comprehensive fellowship and grant writing instruction to improve fellowship awards through structured grant writing resources.
• Expand the integration of AI into the graduate curricula.
• Enhance master’s and postbaccalaureate programming. Establish co-curricular programming for career readiness. Establish an EMBARK Master’s Career and Professional Development curriculum.
• Expand career and professional programming for postdoctoral fellows.
• Expand opportunities for institutional training grants (cross-disciplinary T32s, workshops).
• Support faculty development of teaching, mentoring and leadership skills.

Objectives:

• Align philanthropy with School of Medicine priorities (research, education, community health, faculty).
• Advance research through catalytic philanthropy.
• Grow education and student support.
• Strengthen community health impact.
• Build flexible, unrestricted capacity.
• Invest in faculty excellence.