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It can help get folks on your campus talking to each other, for one thing.
Some are an elegant sentence; some contain many rambling paragraphs. Some have endured unchanged since a college's founding; others have been frequently revised. Some are publicly available in student catalogs and on campus Web sites; others can't be found. But just about every college or university has one: mission statements are declarations of a campus's rationale and purpose; its responsibilities toward students and the community; and its vision of student, faculty, and institutional excellence.
Sometimes termed statements of goals and objectives or statements of purpose, mission statements can provide guidance on the issues of concern on a particular campus, from allocating resources and planning for the future to holding administratore accountable or building the skills essential for citizenship in a democracy and the global economy. College mission statements can be effective tools for addressing problems, moving conversations among faculty and administratore forward, and crafting long-term, sustainable solutions.
When financial resources are plentiful, opportunities may arise for expanding academic programs or developing new programs. For example, the addition of tens of faculty and hundreds of students in music or nursing or engineering might bring breadth and energy to a campus. But what might be the impact on other programs and the character and identity of the institution? A campus convereation that begins with the mission statement can help to answer this question.
When resources become scarce, difficult choices must be made. A college might have to decide whether to curtail faculty hiring in disciplines with low student enrollments or to initiate acrossthe-board cuts. Again, a conversation grounded in the campus's mission statement might help bring about consensus. The time to begin such a convereation is not, however, when a financial crisis is imminent. It is far better instead to have occasional discussions in which senior faculty interpret the mission statement for faculty and administratore new to campus. These senior faculty members can describe the circumstances under which the statement was first drafted and approved and say whether and why it has been revised; they can also explain how the mission statement embodies the campus's unique heritage, traditions, and values, and how it guides the campus's academic programs. At the...