Freshmen are not the only ones adapting to life at Northeastern.

The university hired 21 new professors, or “star hires,” in a variety of different subject areas this year, after adjusting budget money to hire more faculty.

Originally, the Academic Investment Plan, as the budget initiative is known, allocated funds for 20 professors to be hired each year for the next five years.

This year, though, the university exceeded its expectations, according to Provost Ahmed Abdelal.

“I think the new professors are attracted to the environment here,” he said. “They are attracted to what they see at the university, its vision and what can be developed further.”

That vision has been rooted in bringing the university to a more research-oriented education. If that happens, Abdelal said, students will get the same mix of theory and practice education through research and instruction in classes as they do from co-op.

As a result, many of the new hires specialize in research outside of the classroom.

Two of the new hires, Professors Michail Sitkovsky and Alexandros Makriyannis, are in the pharmaceutical sciences department of the Bouv