Mission Statement

The College of Arts and Sciences has as its credo that liberal learning prepares students of all ages and backgrounds to live more fulfilling lives, to appreciate and contribute to the communities of which they are members and to reach their ethical, personal, intellectual and financial goals. To help its students maximize their potential, the College emphasizes critical and analytical thinking through a rigorous “success skills” undergraduate core program in written and oral communication, computing, analyzing and integrating. Faculty scholarship supports diversified liberal arts concentrations available in the humanities, the natural sciences and the social sciences, along with graduate programs in several fields, most offering career-related professional program tracks and practical experience on or off campus.

Goals

1. To provide students with liberal learning that emphasizes a curriculum of inquiry, expanding perspectives and specialization.

2. To offer undergraduate, graduate and professional education that provides students with the means to explore and adapt their career and personal goals and objectives in a changing economic and technological environment.

3. To assure that undergraduate and graduate students develop an appropriate level of core competencies and their capacities for critical inquiry, creativity, research and analysis.

4. To create a diverse community of teachers and learners where students and faculty engage in the free expression of ideas, fostering independent thought and mutual respect.

5. To provide opportunities for students to enhance their aesthetic, intellectual and moral capabilities, and their sense of self-worth, self-confidence and civic responsibility.

6. To attract and maintain an excellent faculty with a commitment to teaching, research and service to the University and the greater community.

7. To attract and retain an increasingly competent student body consistent with the mission of the University.

8. To provide an educational environment which includes appropriate classrooms, technologies, libraries, laboratories, recreation areas and other facilities that enhance the process of student learning.

9. To promote research and artistic creation by faculty and students, in order to contribute to the expansion of human knowledge and the richness of human existence