the new umass mission statement
just got the minutes of the board of trustees series of meetings this past february (what's with the 4 month time lag?).
most of the transpiring were of the routine kind, such as appointments, setting tuition and fees, naming chairs, and financial stuff i don't understand.
one change that i found interesting is the revised mission statement, which reads as follows:
"The University's mission is to provide an affordable and accessible education of high quality and to conduct programs of research and public service that advance knowledge and improve the lives of the people of the Commonwealth, the nation and the world".
i found a different version on the umass amherst provost's website (why not on the trustees' website?), which i take to be the old version. The substantive differences are:
- the new mission statement adds "accessible" to "affordable" as a property of the kind of education that the university provides.
- the new mission statement adds the nation and the world as domains of people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the research and public service of the university.
these both seem like improvements to me. "accessible" is a broader notion than "affordability". it implies that the university endeavors to remove restrictions other than financial ones that might impede students' ability to earn a umass education, such as physical or religious restrictions that might require special accommodations. it might also be taken to imply a commitment to combatting the forms of social oppression that LGBT, female, minority and other students have to face during their tenure at umass.
most of the transpiring were of the routine kind, such as appointments, setting tuition and fees, naming chairs, and financial stuff i don't understand.
one change that i found interesting is the revised mission statement, which reads as follows:
"The University's mission is to provide an affordable and accessible education of high quality and to conduct programs of research and public service that advance knowledge and improve the lives of the people of the Commonwealth, the nation and the world".
i found a different version on the umass amherst provost's website (why not on the trustees' website?), which i take to be the old version. The substantive differences are:
- the new mission statement adds "accessible" to "affordable" as a property of the kind of education that the university provides.
- the new mission statement adds the nation and the world as domains of people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of the research and public service of the university.
these both seem like improvements to me. "accessible" is a broader notion than "affordability". it implies that the university endeavors to remove restrictions other than financial ones that might impede students' ability to earn a umass education, such as physical or religious restrictions that might require special accommodations. it might also be taken to imply a commitment to combatting the forms of social oppression that LGBT, female, minority and other students have to face during their tenure at umass.
posted by Uri at 11:22 AM
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