Mission and Vision

Educational Mission

Our mission at Stetson University is to provide an excellent education in a creative community where learning and values meet, and to foster in students the qualities of mind and heart that will prepare them to reach their full potential as informed citizens of local communities and the world. At Stetson, the art of teaching is practiced through programs solidly grounded in a tradition of liberal learning that stimulates critical thinking, imaginative inquiry, creative expression, and lively intellectual debate. The art of learning is enhanced through small interactive classes, close student-faculty alliances, and collaborative approaches that provide the foundation for rewarding careers and advanced study in selective graduate and professional programs. We embrace diverse methodologies to foster effective communication, information and technological literacy, and aesthetic appreciation. We encourage the development of informed convictions, independent judgment, and lifelong commitments to learning that are characteristic features of the enlightened citizen. In bringing together learning and values, the University encourages all of its members to demonstrate personal integrity; to develop an appreciation for the spiritual dimension of life; to embrace leadership in an increasingly complex, interdependent, and technological world; and to commit to active forms of social responsibility.

Values and Vision

From its founding, Stetson University has affirmed the importance of spiritual life and the quest for truth in its educational mission. The University motto, Pro Deo et Veritate (“For God and Truth”), is a symbol of this commitment, and it expresses our determination to integrate the pursuit of a liberal education with the search for meaning in our lives and in our communities. Chartered as an independent and comprehensive university, Stetson had an historical relationship with the Baptist denomination. The University today embraces its values-based, Judeo-Christian heritage through a self-directed vision focused on inclusiveness and mutual respect. The University includes persons from diverse religious, ethnic, cultural, economic, and intellectual backgrounds and sexual orientation. It is thus from varying perspectives that members of the University community have joined together to affirm collectively:

• The centrality of knowledge, examined ideas, and independent judgment in the life of an educated person;
• The inherent dignity, worth, and equality of all persons;
• The importance of community in human life;
• The role of religious and spiritual quests for meaning in human experience;
• The value of diverse persons and differing ideas in an educational community;
• The responsibility we share to work toward social justice;
• The necessity for decisions to be guided by ethics and social responsibility;
• The obligation of individuals and communities to act as responsible stewards of the natural environment; and
• The merit of striving for health and wellness, both in the mind and the body. In our curriculum and co-curricular activities, then, we strive to infuse liberal education with the values of religious and spiritual life, ethical decision-making, human diversity and commonality, gender equity, community engagement, environmental responsibility and health and wellness. We aspire to develop distinctive, innovative, and interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs that are centered on vigorous intellectual inquiry, informed by these values, increasingly global in perspective, and worthy of local and national recognition.

Excerpted from the Stetson University Catalog.