2008 Woodie Awards
Let's stick to our mission, get priorities straight
Marie Daghlian
Issue date: 2/21/07 Section: Opinion
What is the real mission of this university? I wondered about this as I read the letter sent to all members of our university community from our president soliciting our input on SSU's evolving strategic plan. The plan is to provide a roadmap for the next five to ten years to get us where we want to be based on our values and priorities.
The letter provided a helpful link so I decided to check out our school mission: "to prepare students to be learned men and women who have a foundation for life-long learning; have a broad cultural perspective, have a keen appreciation of intellectual and aesthetic achievements; will be active citizens and leaders in society; are capable of pursuing fulfilling careers in a changing world; and are concerned with contributing to the health and well-being of the world at large.
All in all, our mission is pretty impressive. The mission statement goes on to state that to achieve these goals, the first obligation of SSU is "to develop and maintain excellent programs of undergraduate instruction grounded in the liberal arts and sciences."
Now we all know that the university needs money to achieve its mission and is constrained by the amount of funding it gets from the state and how much it can raise student fees to accomplish its lofty goals. We also know that the budgetary constraints of each school within the university are fairly severe at this time otherwise we would not have such a high faculty/student ratio (SFR) and difficulty getting into the classes of our choice. On top of this SSU has taken on a large debt load to fund the construction of the Green Music Center.
All of the above is a brief backdrop to a recent dispute that most students know little about. It seems that the administration wants to take money from each school (on the order of $82,000 per year) to fund the addition of 15 new tenure -track faculty positions in the Business School. These positions are necessary if the school wants accreditation from AACSB (American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business). It seems that business school students are convinced that accreditation will make it easier for them to get jobs or get into good MBA programs.
The letter provided a helpful link so I decided to check out our school mission: "to prepare students to be learned men and women who have a foundation for life-long learning; have a broad cultural perspective, have a keen appreciation of intellectual and aesthetic achievements; will be active citizens and leaders in society; are capable of pursuing fulfilling careers in a changing world; and are concerned with contributing to the health and well-being of the world at large.
All in all, our mission is pretty impressive. The mission statement goes on to state that to achieve these goals, the first obligation of SSU is "to develop and maintain excellent programs of undergraduate instruction grounded in the liberal arts and sciences."
Now we all know that the university needs money to achieve its mission and is constrained by the amount of funding it gets from the state and how much it can raise student fees to accomplish its lofty goals. We also know that the budgetary constraints of each school within the university are fairly severe at this time otherwise we would not have such a high faculty/student ratio (SFR) and difficulty getting into the classes of our choice. On top of this SSU has taken on a large debt load to fund the construction of the Green Music Center.
All of the above is a brief backdrop to a recent dispute that most students know little about. It seems that the administration wants to take money from each school (on the order of $82,000 per year) to fund the addition of 15 new tenure -track faculty positions in the Business School. These positions are necessary if the school wants accreditation from AACSB (American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business). It seems that business school students are convinced that accreditation will make it easier for them to get jobs or get into good MBA programs.