Through a series of 26 funded initiatives, the Horizons Project is helping the University of Saskatchewan build an innovative and financially sustainable future.

Guided by our University Plan 2025, these strategic investments will support our research and innovation enterprise and enhance our academic programming to provide students with the knowledge and skills needed for social, cultural, and economic development in Saskatchewan and the world. These initiatives will also create opportunities for better alignment and connectivity centrally and across academic units and will impact how we operate administratively across campus.

Learn about initiatives supported through the Horizons Project:

Administrative Services Renewal (ASR) Initiative

Guided by the University Plan 2025, the Administrative Services Renewal (ASR) Initiative is re-envisioning how business services are delivered across vice-presidential portfolios, colleges, and schools. By strengthening our administrative environment and operations, we can:

• enhance the overall experience for faculty, staff, students, and leaders;
• create greater efficiencies and improve well-being across the institution; and
• ensure we have communities of practices and career pathways for our valued administrative professionals.

Together, we can provide services that are more responsive, timely, and efficient, that support our research and teaching mission, and have greater impact within our communities.

Integrated Services Renewal (ISR) Initiative

The Integrated Services Renewal (ISR) Initiative is supporting a campus transition to a modern cloud-based enterprise system and supporting technology, which will lead USask to have more consistency and standardization in our roles, policies, and processes.

Other Initiatives

Other initiatives funded through the Horizon Project: 

• More Initiatives

Every person who needs menstrual products should have access to those products. The USask Period Equity Project is about helping make that happen. Free menstrual hygiene supplies are available to all members of the USask community in many washrooms across campus, including washrooms designated as female, male, and gender neutral.

Alleviating period inequity is important to USask. Students have voiced their support for enhanced access to menstrual hygiene supplies on campus. Following consultation with students and student groups, the Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic initiated the Period Equity Project with the goals of reducing period inequity and enhancing menstrual equity.

• Period Equity Project
• Submit Questions and Comments

The Flexible Learning Initiative began in January 2024. The initiative has defined flexible learning at USask and will set goals and a plan to achieve them. Flexible learning aims to provide students with choices in how, where, and when they engage in learning enabling more personalized pathways into and through a program. The project has begun by identifying and defining USask’s current state, including return on investment analysis, assessment of opportunities and challenges with internal stakeholders (e.g., colleges, administrative units), and an assessment of needs and interests of external stakeholders (e.g., current and prospective students). We will use this information to communicate about our successes and assess and design a plan to address capacity to deliver.

Learn more about USask's Flexible Learning Initiative:

• Flexible Learning
• Course and Program Offerings

The Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic is creating a new advisory committee to guide activities related to the Scarborough Charter, with a focus on Black inclusion and Black excellence on campus.

In November 2021, USask signed the Scarborough Charter alongside dozens of partner institutions across Canada. Signatories of the Scarborough Charter are committed to redressing anti-Black racism and to fostering Black inclusion in post-secondary institutions, based on four overarching principles: Black flourishing, inclusive excellence, mutuality, and accountability.

The Provost’s Advisory Committee – Scarborough Charter (PAC-SC), co-chaired by the deputy provost, will provide USask’s provost and vice-president academic with advice on priorities and actions stemming from the commitments to action outlined in the Scarborough Charter. The PAC-SC will make recommendations on institutional strategy and transformative actionable steps to assist USask in achieving a more respectful, accountable, equitable, diverse, and inclusive community. The PAC-SC will also assist USask in preventing anti-Black racism by critically reviewing policies, processes, and practices to understand how they may contribute to systemic anti-Black racism and by providing recommendations that will further Black inclusion and excellence.  

• Scarborough Charter
• PAC-SC announcement

The Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic has launched the Sustainability Faculty Fellowship initiative as a key part of the education strand of the USask Sustainability Strategy.

The University Plan 2025 calls for us to be The University the World Needs and one that sets the standard in learning. We are called to be a university whose graduates have the drive, the curiosity, and the humility to work with others in addressing the greatest challenges and opportunities the world faces. Through nakaatayihtaamoowin, we understand sustainability to mean protecting and honouring the wellness of all humanity and creation by taking care of the relationships with which we’ve been entrusted —with the land, with the air and water, with our students, colleagues, and neighbours—guided by mindfulness, respect, and reverence. The USask Sustainability Strategy 2021-2031 builds on our University Plan 2025, outlining key goals related to teaching and learning. This fellowship program is a significant initiative that will move us towards these goals.

• Sustainability Faculty Fellows
• USask Sustainability Strategy 2021-2031

Strategic Enrolment Management (SEM) is a planning practice centered on expressing an institution’s overarching strategic priorities in terms of the optimal number and mix of students enrolled along with a culture and environment that supports recruitment, admissions, experiences, and success through graduation in alignment with the vision and values of the organization. USask’s vision requires a purposeful approach to SEM:

We will contribute to a sustainable future by being among the best in the world in areas of special and emerging strengths, through outstanding research, scholarly, and artistic work that addresses the needs and aspirations of our region and the world, and through exceptional teaching and engagement. We will be an outstanding institution of research, learning, knowledge-keeping, reconciliation, and inclusion with and by Indigenous peoples and communities.

SEM prompts consideration of the many variables — both academic and administrative — across an institution that impact a student’s experience and progress toward pursuing their educational goals, and ultimately their decision and/or ability to enroll and/or remain enrolled. As such, priorities are defined and pursued through collaborative planning and action, fostering alignment of curriculum, delivery, processes, and services with institutional values. A SEM Steering Committee has been established (in Winter 2024) to advance this work and guide the creation of strategies, plans, tools, and analytics to support college and school leaders in their SEM initiatives. The Terms of Reference for the Steering Committee is available below.

• Steering Committee Terms of Reference

The Steering Committee had its inaugural meeting on March 8, 2024 to begin discussions on SEM-related priorities and options for implementation of sub-committees. Further information on work plans, initiatives, and outcomes will be available on this webpage as things unfold.

Artificial Intelligence Taskforce

USask is committed to being the university the world needs. This includes engaging intentionally and strategically to explore the university’s short- and long-term use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic has established an interdisciplinary taskforce to:

• conduct research,
• consult with stakeholders, and
• advance the development of institutional principles, guidelines, and processes for AI usage by researchers, students, faculty, and administration and support services.

This work is crucial in harnessing AI's potential for enhancing human capabilities, while aligning it with the university's vision, priorities, and commitment to equity, Indigenous advancement, and innovation. Through the outcomes of the AI Taskforce, USask can responsibly and effectively utilizing AI to advance research, teaching, and societal impact.

• Taskforce Terms of Reference

Faculty Complement Planning Working Group

USask is dedicated to preparing students with the knowledge, drive, and curiosity needed to work collaboratively in addressing the world’s greatest challenges for Saskatchewan and from Saskatchewan.

Guided by USask’s vision and strategic priorities, the Faculty Complement Planning Working Group is developing principles that will inform how the university integrates a multi-year complement planning process at an institutional level, with the academic priorities and budget processes of each college and school.

The working group is striving to develop principles that will ensure faculty hiring is strategic, inclusive, and cognizant of USask’s need for teaching and research capacity, while also operating within its financial means.

• Working Group Terms of Reference