Standard 1 for Campus Comment

Batesladmin

Informations

• Publié par: Thion
• Nombre de lectures: 57
• Langue: English

Extrait

Standard One - Mission and Purposes

Draft for Campus Comment ONLY, May 18, 2010

Standard One

Mission and Purposes

The institution’s mission and purposes are appropriate to higher education, consistent with

its charter or other operating authority, and implemented in a manner that complies with

the Standards of the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education.

The institution’s

mission gives direction to its activities and provides a basis for the assessment and

enhancement of the institution’s effectiveness.

Description

The current Mission Statement of the College was adopted by the Board of Trustees in May

2010:

Since 1855, Bates College has been dedicated to the emancipating potential of the liberal

arts.

Bates educates the whole person through creative and rigorous scholarship in a

collaborative residential community.

With ardor and devotion—

Amore ac Studio

—we

engage the transformative power of our differences, cultivating intellectual discovery and

informed civic action.

Preparing leaders sustained by a love of learning and a

commitment to responsible stewardship of the wider world, Bates is a college for coming

times.

The mission statement replaces the much longer statement (283 words versus the current 77

words) that guided the College successfully since 1990 (wording for the 1990 mission statement

is available in the

2009-2010 college catalog

).

Appraisal

The former mission statement had been ripe for revision for some time, as it was written and

adopted before the advent of many of the College’s most distinctive programs and initiatives,

such as the Harward Center for Community Partnerships and its endeavors, the innovative

general education curriculum, the expansion of off-campus and study abroad programs, and

increasing emphasis on student/faculty research.

Members of the College’s Board of Trustees,

Advancement officers, and Admissions staff had all noted the need for a statement that better

reflected the current state of the College; other members of the community expressed yearning

for sustained, campus-wide discussion of the College’s overarching ambitions and purposes.

In 2007, as part of a larger Institutional Planning Process instigated by President Hansen

(detailed in

Standard Two: Planning and Evaluation

), a working group of faculty and staff began

to develop a new draft statement of the College’s mission.

Their work reflected the findings of

four larger planning groups, which together comprised more than forty faculty, staff, and

students—a sizable cross-section of the campus.

The

resulting document

, delivered to the

President in 2008, read as follows:

Bates College cultivates an intellectual community engaged in creating and sharing

knowledge.

Through a rigorous curriculum and scholarly activity extending across the

Standard One - Mission and Purposes

Draft for Campus Comment ONLY, May 18, 2010

disciplines and beyond the physical boundaries of the College, Bates encourages

individuals to develop as thinkers, nurture their passions, and engage in principled

action.

That 2008 draft statement was used to launch a still wider public conversation about the

College’s mission and purposes.

Beginning in January 2010, a fourteen-person committee of

faculty, staff, and students (nine of whom are or will be alumni of the College) initiated a

community-wide discussion of the 2008 draft, designed to better articulate our collective goals.

After extensive consultation with students, alumni, parents and families, community partners,

faculty, staff, administrators and trustees, that committee of fourteen delivered a final draft of the

mission document to the President on May 4, 2010.

The mission statement was approved by a

unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees on May 15, 2010.

The newly adopted document reflects the College’s long and distinctive tradition of challenging,

egalitarian liberal arts education, while also expressing our aspirations for twenty-first century

graduates.

The language of the statement self-consciously evokes the legacies of our distinctive

abolitionist and co-educational history, from Benjamin Mays’ insistence on the College’s

“emancipating” role to the College’s nineteenth-century Latin motto to founder Oren Cheney’s

call for a “college for coming time.”

Yet the statement also highlights key elements of the

College’s more recent emphases, including deepening recognition of the centrality of diversity to

student learning and development, recognition of the intimate relationship between curricular

and co-curricular experiences, and a steady expansion of learning opportunities beyond the

boundaries of the campus.

Throughout the process, the revision committee’s goal was to convey a sense of purpose widely

understood and shared by the governing board, administration, faculty, staff, students, alumni,

and families of the institution.

To that end, the committee sought to build deep and broad

community engagement in reflection and revision of successive working drafts.

Along with

campus-wide open forums, a public website with space for commentary, and a single, clear email

address for feedback (

[e-mail]

), the revision committee held dozens of

more intimate, alternate venues for community participation.

These ranged from student “phone-

bankers” bringing alumni into the process to individual, in-office consultations with each of the

heads of major administrative units to a “mission revision” theme night at the student Dining

Commons.

In addition, a five-person subcommittee of the Board of Trustees, each with

significant experience in mission statement development and/or revision, was convened by the

President and the Chair of the Board’s Committee on Academic Affairs at the outset of the

process.

The chair of the campus revision committee sent weekly updates to the chair of that

trustee subcommittee, inviting questions and comments at each turn.

Communication between

the Board and the campus regarding the process was further facilitated by the arrival of the new

Vice President and Dean of Enrollment and External Affairs in February, and by a

teleconference, open to the entire Board, to discuss a late-stage draft.

In short, the

process

as

well as the resulting document exemplify core Bates values:

the invigorating promise of

collective intellectual discovery and debate, pursued with a distinctive ethos of civility, equity,

and respect.

Standard One - Mission and Purposes

Draft for Campus Comment ONLY, May 18, 2010

Projection

The revised mission statement has been percolating into the activities and attitudes of members

of the College community since its adoption in May.

College websites were immediately

updated in accordance with the new document; print materials such as the 2010-2011 College

Catalog also reflect the change.

In May 2010, members of the revision committee met with

various alumni gatherings to help disseminate the new vision, and began conversations with key

units on campus—the Dean of Students office, Admissions, Advancement, and Communications

and Media Relations—to discuss ways to use the document to enhance outreach and recruitment.

At the same time, the new document is being unpacked as a tool for assessment by staff in

Institutional Research and Assessment.

Attach a copy of the current mission statement.

Document

URL

Date approved by the

governing board

Institutional Mission Statement

?

http://home.bates.edu/codex/mission

/

?

adopted 1990

Mission Statement published

URL

Print publication

?

1 Bates College Catalog (2009-2010)

?

http://abacus.bates.edu/catalog/?s=c

urrent&a=renderStatic&c=college

1-Aug-09

2

http://www.bates.edu/mission-

statement.xml

3

http://www.bates.edu/ip-bates-

mission-statement.xml

4

Related statements

URL

Print Publications

?

1 Vision for Bates

?

http://www.bates.edu/ip-vision-for-

bates.xml

Bates College Self-Study

Report, 2000

2 Vision, values, and legacy

http://home.bates.edu/about/vision/

3 Core Mission and a Vision for Bates

http://abacus.bates.edu/acad/commi

ttees/goals2005/vision.html

4 General Education and a Bates Education

http://www.bates.edu/gened2011.xm

l

5 General Education Concentrations

http://abacus.bates.edu/catalog/?s=c

urrent&a=renderDept&d=GEC

Bates College Catalog 2009-

2010, pp 59-65

Standard 1: Mission and Purposes