In 2016, the McGill Faculty of Medicine (now Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) launched a new strategic planning exercise – Project Renaissance – to help guide its educational, research and community engagement efforts during the five-year period spanning 2017-2022. This initiative was built on the preceding strategic planning exercise, which concluded with the rollout of a new MDCM program and the launch of a Strategic Research Plan, as well as better recognition for clinician-teachers in the hospital network, among other improvements.

Project Renaissance drives the Faculty’s vision of healthier societies through education, discovery, collaboration and clinical care.

The major goals of Project Renaissance include:

• Ensure that our educational programs prepare learners for their roles as health care providers and health researchers in the 21st century
• Position McGill as Canada’s leading University in health research
• Reinforce McGill’s leading role in health care in Quebec and Canada
• Set the stage for the Faculty’s third century through the creation of a Health Sciences Campus

Over the past decade, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences has increasingly come to resemble a federation of “Schools,” rather than a medical program with other professional schools at the periphery. This trend was reinforced with the establishment of a new School of Population and Global Health in 2018, itself an outcome of the previous strategic plan.

Within the school model, the mandate of each of the Faculty’s Vice-Deans is to encourage cross-talk amongst all of our schools through Faculty-wide strategic plans and the offices, centres and institutes that support them. As part of the Project Renaissance strategic planning, we identified four cross-cutting themes for which a strategic planning exercise was undertaken, led by a Vice-Dean and including broad consultation:
 

• Education
  - Strategic Education Plan (August 2022)
  - ESP Implementation Initiatives (2018)
• Research
  - Strategic Research Plan (Sept 2020)
  - Strategic Research Plan (May 2021)
• Academic Affairs
  - Academic Affairs Strategic Plan (Sept 2020)
• Health Affairs
  - Campus Outaouais (Sept 2020)

Strategic plans are reviewed annually by the Faculty’s Deanery Executive Committee and shared at Faculty forums, including Faculty Council meetings.