An update on NIU’s Vision 2020 initiative was presented at the Board of Trustees meeting Thursday.

The initiative, which was announced in 2010, set benchmarks for the university to meet by 2020. The overall achievement of the plan is to make NIU the most “student-centered research university in the Midwest,” said NIU President John Peters.

Peters reviewed the progress of each benchmark of the Vision 2020 initiative for the board. The benchmarks of the initiative include academic enrichment, distributed learning, student recruitment, student retention, technology and campus infrastructure.

A goal of the academic enrichment benchmark is increasing engaged learning among students. NIU has established various programs, like Research Rookies, to strengthen the academic experiences of students.

The university is also planning to increase engagement among large lecture classes for the 2012-2013 academic year. The classes would include “media-rich” interactive online activities.

“Just because a course is large does not mean the students and faculty cannot be engaged,” said Raymond Alden, executive vice president and provost of Academic Affairs.

The 21,869 student enrollment for the 2012 fall semester did not reach the goal of 24,051, according to Peter’s Vision 2020 presentation. Structural factors, like a large graduation of students in spring 2012, and increasingly smaller freshman classes in the past three years contributed to the decline of enrollment for the fall 2012 semester, Peters said.

A three-year decline in freshman enrollment was halted, but the university needed to “double down” on transfer enrollment, Peters said.

Trustee Wheeler Coleman said he was concerned about enrollment and recruitment but was optimistic the university could achieve their goal of 30,000 students by 2020. He said he was surprised to find out that Iowa State University reached a goal similar to NIU by having over 30,000 students enrolled in five years.

“They were able to grow six, seven, 8,000 students in actually half the time,” Coleman said. “We got to step back. Maybe we can learn something from them.”

In his concluding remarks on the Vision 2020 update, Peters said the initiative is the result of extensive benchmarking and had open input from trustees. He said he was confident NIU would be able to accomplish this vision.