Standard One

MISSION AND PURPOSES

Description

On February 10, 2009, the Board of Trustees of Boston University voted to approve the following mission statement:

Boston University is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world. Boston University is committed to generating new knowledge to benefit society.

We remain dedicated to our founding principles: that higher education should be accessible to all and that research, scholarship, artistic creation, and professional practice should be conducted in the service of the wider community—local and international. These principles endure in the University’s insistence on the value of diversity, in its tradition and standards of excellence, and in its dynamic engagement with the City of Boston and the world.

Boston University comprises a remarkable range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs built on a strong foundation of the liberal arts and sciences. With the support and oversight of the Board of Trustees, the University, through our faculty, continually innovates in education and research to ensure that we meet the needs of students and an ever-changing world.

As Boston University’s first formal mission statement, these paragraphs attempt to capture and distill the defining characteristics that have shaped the University’s history and will continue to influence its future.

Boston University’s founders—Isaac Rich, Lee Claflin, and Jacob Sleeper—could not have foreseen the myriad ways in which Boston University would grow from a Methodist seminary to a diverse institution comprised of 17 schools and colleges. In the Charter, they chose to say only that Boston University should be run “in such manner as shall most effectually promote virtue and piety, and learning in such of the languages and of the liberal and useful arts and sciences, as shall be recommended from time to time by the said corporation.”

Nearly a century and a half later, the landscape of higher education has changed and the number of “liberal and useful arts and sciences” on offer at Boston University has expanded greatly. As a result, it is now possible to classify Boston University as a specific kind of university: a comprehensive research university. It is also possible to identify certain institutional characteristics that have distinguished Boston University from its earliest days. Foremost among them are a commitment to merit—as opposed to race, sex, or creed—as the only valid criterion for admission; a belief in the centrality of the liberal arts and sciences; and an emphasis on serving the wider community, thereby fulfilling the vision of Lemuel Merlin, the University’s third president, of an institution “in the heart of the city, in the service of the city.”

Accordingly, students and faculty at Boston University are distinguished by the high caliber of their research and scholarship; their shared foundation in the liberal arts, regardless of specific disciplinary and professional interests; and their eagerness to engage with the city of Boston and with the farthest reaches of an increasingly interconnected world.

The recent strategic planning process, another milestone in Boston University’s history, provided a good opportunity for the BU community to reflect on our past, take stock of the present, and articulate our hopes for the future. The planning process, which is described in more detail in STANDARD TWO: PLANNING AND EVALUATION, was deliberately designed to engage faculty, students, and staff at all levels and across all units. From this extensive, campus-wide conversation—which also sought to incorporate input from alumni, parents, and others with an interest in Boston University—came an articulation of the values and characteristics that define BU as an institution.

These traits, which are reiterated in the mission statement, include: an emphasis on the primacy and complementarity of research and teaching, and a commitment to excellence in both; a definition of knowledge expansive enough to include scientific, scholarly, and creative activities; a commitment to providing a rich residential and co-curricular experience for students; an understanding that a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds will necessarily benefit an institution of higher education; a belief in the importance of giving back to and actively engaging with the city of Boston and the world; a recognition that content and pedagogy must be continually assessed and refined to best support teaching and learning; and a respect for the continuing relevance of the liberal arts.

Appraisal

For many at Boston University, the strategic planning process that led to the development of a formal mission statement provided an opportunity to learn more about the University’s history. This history, particularly Boston University’s decision to admit students without regard to race or sex from the day of its opening, is rightfully a source of pride for the Boston University community today, and an inspiration for the future.

Because a conversation about Boston University’s mission and defining characteristics was initiated relatively recently, and the mission statement was approved within the last few months, the text of the mission statement has not yet found its way into key institutional publications such as the Undergraduate Student Bulletin and the Faculty Handbook. As a result, it is too early to describe the mission statement as a document widely known and utilized as a basis for evaluating Boston University’s adherence to its mission. However, because the mission statement is an articulation of the mission that Boston University has been carrying out for decades, we are confident that it will become such a document in the future.

Projection

Important publications and essential reference guides for faculty, staff, and students at Boston University are updated and reprinted annually. (Many are printed annually and all are published online.) The mission statement will be included in key print and online publications, beginning with the 2009–10 academic year.

To have real value, the mission statement will be critically reviewed periodically; more frequent will be reviews of the strategic plan to achieve our mission. Boston University’s growth and expansion to this point shows—as does our recent adoption of a formal mission statement— that articulating an institution’s mission and purposes can be best accomplished by means of considered, candid reflection and sometimes only with the benefit of hindsight.