As the School of Information marks 100 years as a professional school at UC Berkeley, the I School community, led by Dean Eric Meyer, has completed a year-long strategic planning process, resulting in seven priorities and seventeen initial actions designed to guide the school over the next decade.
Looking forward during a milestone year
2026 marks a century since the school’s founding as the School of Librarianship in 1926. From that day to the present, the school and the study of information itself have evolved alongside computerization, the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence. Entering its second century, the I School is using the moment to both celebrate the past and to shape what comes next.
Rather than creating a generic plan built around pillars and buzzwords that could be found on any university webpage, the school led with the assumption that it pursues excellence; its faculty, staff, students, and alumni reflect that excellence; and our impact is significant. Next, the school grounded the planning process through direct input from its community, gathered through workshops, interviews, and consultations with faculty, staff, students, and alumni. One tangible product of that process is an original illustration of the school’s identity, created by Pixar artist Bobby Podesta, capturing the major themes that emerged through the process and centered on one of the most striking common themes that came up repeatedly at the workshops: a strong sense of community.
Seven Priorities for the Next Decade
The plan organizes the school’s efforts around seven priorities:
- Invest in faculty and research — growing philanthropically-funded faculty lines, sustaining the Bellwether Postdoctoral Scholars program, and deepening the school's global research partnerships.
- Evaluate existing degrees and explore new degree offerings — including a feasibility study for a potential undergraduate program.
- Increase real-world capstone, clinic, and client-based learning — building on the momentum of programs like the Public Interest Technology Clinic and the UC Berkeley Cybersecurity Clinic, whose model has since been adopted by 60 clinics in 8 countries worldwide.
- Implement school-wide themes — a biennial effort to unite events, teaching, and community programming around shared topics.
- Develop sensing and forecasting functions — using the school’s own expertise in data to inform its own decision-making, from enrollment trends to funding strategy.
- Pursue emergent opportunities — including new working groups examining how AI is reshaping the student experience, teaching, and the workplaces I School graduates enter.
- Expand strategic communications — strengthening the school’s website, research communications, and the tools that help every member of the I School community tell its story.
Built on a Century of Adaptability
The plan’s framing returns throughout to the concept of the school as a “bellwether,” an indicator of where the information field is headed next. While the term bellwether is a recent addition to our mission statement, the framing isn’t new; it’s been central to our identity through a century of technological change, many name changes, and the transformation from a library science program into one of the world’s leading information schools.
With more than 10,000 living alumni and a growing network of regional chapters, including San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York, launched in 2026, the school is counting on its community to help carry these priorities forward.
“These strategic priorities are a framework upon which we can build our future,” wrote Dean Eric Meyer. “We need everyone’s help to deliver this set of strategic priorities…. It will involve work, but the work will hopefully be productive and rewarding once the ideas that formed around tables during planning sessions start to appear in our practices.”
Read the I School’s full Strategic Priorities 2026 plan.
For responses, comments, or questions, reach out to strategy@ischool.berkeley.edu
