Mission

We are committed to being an educational community that:

• Offers a broad range of undergraduate programs, selected graduate programs, and continuing education programs;
• Views learning and scholarship as a shared task of discovering, integrating, applying and communicating knowledge; and
• Emphasizes learning and scholarship at the intersections of liberal and professional education, of the disciplines, and of theory and practice.

As a comprehensive university, we commit ourselves to:

• Educating students within a vibrant learning community;
• Strong programs in both liberal arts and sciences and the professional disciplines;
• Collaboration across disciplinary and organizational boundaries.

As a community, we are dedicated to:

• Excellence in teaching and seek to share it, critically review and evaluate it, and together transform our practices of learning and teaching;
• Excellence in creating new knowledge, integrating this knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, and applying it creatively to meet human needs.

We are responsive and serve the needs of our community and region. Our pursuit of learning and scholarship is characterized by academic freedom and professional responsibility.

We are committed to a Catholic vision of learning and scholarship including:

• A common search for truth, based on the belief that truth is ultimately one and can be more fully known through both faith and reason;
• A commitment to the dignity of the human person as a creative and social being created in the image and likeness of God; and
• An appreciation for the ways creation, people, communities, and the ordinary things in life manifest, in a sacramental manner, the mystery of God.

A Catholic vision of the intellectual life springs ultimately from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The Incarnation obliges and frees Christians to continue uniting the human and the divine, to integrate learning and scholarship, to explore the implications of the Gospel for all of human culture while honoring academic freedom.

The University, as Catholic, carries out its mission in communion with the Church, the believing community in and through which revelation is received, lived, and handed on. The relations between the University and the Church are marked by mutual trust, close and consistent collaboration, and open dialogue.

The University, as Catholic, also relies on the presence and work of people from other religious traditions, indeed, all people of good will, in discovering what is true, cherishing what is good, and enjoying what is beautiful.

We are committed to the Marianist tradition of education that includes:

• Educating the whole person through a learning community of challenge and support;
• Connecting learning to leadership and service; and
• Collaborating for adaptation and change

Marianist educational communities support the full development of their members. In linking learning and scholarship to leadership and service, we seek to be a leaven for good in our world.

In the Marianist tradition, leadership is service, and leaders seek to lead with virtue. As a community of responsible inquiry, we create an environment in which our members, working in a scholarly manner, are free to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their work, the work of others, and the trends in our society.

The University encourages its members to judge for themselves how institutions are performing their purposes, to expose deficiencies in their structures and operations, and to propose and actively promote improvements when these are deemed necessary.

The University also encourages its members to collaborate in building community and to join in a quest for a more perfect human society. Collaboration for adaptation and change recognizes the diverse gifts and talents of all members of the community and brings them together to realize a common mission in the midst of new and challenging circumstances.