Institutional Plan 2017

The TU/e Strategic Plan 2020, presented in 2011,

speaks to our ambition to have a large scientific

and societal impact as an internationally renowned

research university in engineering science &

technology. This also delineates the role we want to

play in the high-tech Brainport region and in the

Dutch knowledge economy: to contribute to societal

solutions and the competitiveness of the region

by training talented engineers and doing excellent

research.

The Strategic Plan 2020, presented by the university

in 2011, is best characterized as a strategy of growth,

with the core goal of increasing student numbers by

50%, up to about 11,000 students. Taking action on

the large, global societal challenges and further

developing the high-tech ecosystem of the Brainport

region requires highly skilled technological

knowledge workers. This year, we welcomed our

11,000th student, but this does not mean our growth

is complete.

Still, this growth has so far been a great success:

this ambitious target has been reached through the

large-scale efforts of our staff. Our university

community can be proud of what we achieved in such

a short time. At the same time, this growth poses

our main challenge for the near future: the number

of students is rising faster than our means – to

appoint scientists and lecturers and to invest in the

required educational infrastructure. The most

important priority is maintaining our educational

quality: if our means are insufficient, we must limit

the number of students.

However, it remains important to strive toward

training more engineers – as an institution and a

society. Not fully meeting the need for engineers

will have a substantial impact: large talent

shortages for our high-tech ecosystem, but also a

step back in realizing new technology to support

the energy transition, better healthcare and new,

more effective mobility. In short, it remains crucial

to fully meet the growing need for engineers; for the

Netherlands as a whole and the Eindhoven region

in particular.

In addition to our growth, the university has also

made strides in other areas: large-scale educational

innovation, participation in excellent research

projects, more intense collaboration with companies,

renovations of buildings and facilities on campus

and further development of our internal support

processes. Many people have worked hard for these

successes, which is why many ambitious goals for

2020 have already been achieved today. To allow

both education and research to continue to shine in

the near future, we do have to address new

challenges. This is why this institutional plan provides

an update to our Strategic Plan 2020, on themes such

as excellence, international impact, partnerships,

where people matter and a healthy financial basis.

In the coming years, TU/e needs to focus on these

challenges. At the same time, important trends

require us to look beyond 2020: digitization, global

knowledge hubs, smart specialization of regions,

increasing global competition for talent, and the

strong need for innovation to maintain the competitive

position of Dutch industry. To make timely decisions,

together with our partners, we need to explore the

world beyond the 2020 horizon.

For this reason, we are inviting students, employees

and partners to work with us to make the updated

Strategic Plan 2020 become reality and to start a

conversation about what TU/e can look like in 2030.

The Executive Board,

Jan Mengelers, president

Prof. Frank Baaijens, rector magnificus

Jo van Ham, vice president

Eindhoven, April 2017

Preface

Institutional Plan 2017-2020