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End of Year Summary, 2001

UNIVERSITY MISSION & IMAGE COMMITTEE

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End of the Year Summary Report:

June 1, 2001

The University Mission & Image Committee accomplished a great deal in the first year of the MWC Self-Study. First, we defined the tasks our committee is responsible for over the course of the self-study. These include:

To identify the concerns of our stakeholders: faculty, staff, and students from both campuses, alumni, and the community about moving to university status; To sketch out our vision for the new institution which encompasses MWC & JMC; that is, to identify the theme or themes that provide the logic for the overall institution which comprises two distinct missions;
To determine what changes should be made to the current mission statements of each campus, and the institution as a whole;
To determine the extent to which separate institutional images and identities for the two campuses will be promulgated and maintained;
To identify the image for the overall institution which embodies the vision and themes described above; and
To determine in what ways and to what extent the two "semi-autonomous" campuses will be truly independent and in what ways will they be interconnected, with respect to Admissions, and Planning, Academic Program Review & Assessment, and Institutional Research.

In addition, like all the Self-Study committees, ours has responsibility for providing input to the Final Report of the Self-Study, and developing questions for the Visiting Consulting Committee.

Over the course of the year, we have made substantial progress on the first four tasks. After identifying themes valued on both campuses, e.g. academic excellence, quality teaching, high student/faculty interaction, we decided that given the distinct missions of the two campuses, defining the university by emphasizing common denominators was likely to inadequately characterize either campus. Instead, we chose to define the university mission in a way which highlights the distinctiveness of each campus. We then drafted changes to the mission statements of each campus. All three draft mission statements can be reviewed at http://www1.umw.edu/~sgreenla/Mission&Image_Committee/DraftMission.htm

In lieu of the mission of the university, that is, to facilitate the academic programs at each campus, we have decided that to a large extent the two campuses should keep separate images and identities. Each campus will draw from a unique admissions pool. We expect little or no overlap between the two. Each campus will have largely separate program orientations: liberal arts at MWC vs professional and graduate education at JMC, though we recognize that there are some exceptions here, such as business administration, education, and computer science.

What remains to be done, beginning next year, is the following:

Deal with the concerns of our stakeholders;
In conjunction with feedback from the other Self-Study Committees, refine our vision of the university and incorporate this into the mission statements for the two campuses, and the overall institution;
Work out the details regarding the extent to which separate images and identities will be maintained at the two campuses; for example with respect to:

Continue to develop an image for the university;
Determine the ways and the extent to which the two campuses will be truly independent and the ways will they be interconnected with respect to Admissions, and to Planning, Academic Program Review and Assessment, and Institutional Research;
Develop input for the Final Report of the Self-study, and
Develop questions for the Consultants.

This Page Last Modified on: March 29, 2002

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Mary Washington College
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