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Mission statement --
Good intentions or plan for classroom teaching?
This semester I've been working a lot with mission statements, and the experience has led me to some unanticipated conclusions. It began with our Common Student Learning Objectives, which basically are a way of carrying out the promises in SCI's mission statement in the individual courses we teach. More recently, I've been working with Benedictine University's mission statement in connection with a service learning project I'm helping to get off the ground. So it got me to thinking.
Then, on Nov. 11, Peter Drucker died at the age of 95. Considered one of the founding fathers of management as an academic discipline, he is famous for saying a good mission statement should "fit on a T-shirt." I first learned about mission statements by reading Drucker when I was doing issues research for a state official in the early '90s. And I re-read his Managing the Non-Profit Organization when I began working with assessment after I came to SCI. The obits got me to thinking again.
SCI's mission statement and Benedictine's are quite similar. Here they are, side by side:
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| The mission of Springfield College in Illinois is to provide students the best liberal arts education in the Ursuline tradition of a nurturing faith-based environment. We prepare students for a life of learning, leadership and service in a diverse world. | Benedictine University is dedicated to the education of undergraduate and graduate students from diverse ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds. As an academic community committed to liberal arts and professional education distinguished and guided by our Roman Catholic tradition and Benedictine heritage, we prepare our students for a lifetime as active, informed and responsible citizens and leaders in the world community |
But, then, there's nothing surprising or unique about that. I've looked at a lot of college and university mission statements in a year of working with our CSLOs, and typically they touch on lifelong learning, leadership, service and diversity. SCI's emphasis on service reflects our Ursuline heritage: Serviam (I will serve). But it's a common educational goal. All public land grant universities, for example, cite a threefold mission of teaching, research and service.
Out of curiosity, I did a keyword search in Google on lifelong, learning, leadership, service, diversity and mission statement. I got 223,000 hits and links to 865 webpages, from Montana State University and the American Association of Community Colleges to Georgia Tech and the University of Alaska-Southeast with campuses at Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka.
So I think we can safely say SCI's mission statement is in the mainstream.
Peter Drucker's first article appeared in 1939, and his last one came out last year in the Harvard Business Review. He taught generations of corporate businesspeople to ask, "What is our business? Who are our customers? What does our customer consider valuable?" In later years, he focused on the not-for-profit sector, teaching social workers and educators to ask similar questions (Sullivan; Steinfels; "How to Write"). While students are not exactly like industrial widgets, Drucker's model is essentially how we do learning outcomes assessment.
And Drucker's model is driven by purpose and mission. In Managing the Non-Profit Corporation, Drucker says, "The ultimate test is not the beauty of a mission statement. The ultimate test is right action." He adds:
A mission statement has to be operational, otherwise it's just good intentions. A mission statement has to focus on what the institution really tries to do and then do it so that everybody in the organization can say, This is my contribution to the goal.
That, of course, is basically what we were doing when we took SCI's mission statement last year and brainstormed CSLOs from its language about lifelong learning, leadership, service and diversity. And it's why when we draw up a syllabus, or a service learning project, we now relate the CSLOs to what we actually propose to teach. By doing that, I'm coming to realize, we're making the mission statement our own.
I never really warmed up to the current mission statement. Until recently I'd felt it was handed down like a royal decree -- or a speeding ticket -- and I felt about as much ownership over it as I do over a traffic violation. But now I've worked with it a while, I can see it does what a mission statement is supposed to: It helps me decide what I need to do in the classroom. I guess the next step is to get it printed on a T-shirt.
- Pete Ellertsen, chair, Assessment Committee
Nuts & Bolts is an electronic newsletter published by SCI's Assessment Committee. Members are: Bob Blankenberger, humanities and social science; Amy Lakin, languages and literature; Rick Rossetto, life sciences; Steve Stowers, math; Barb Tanzyus, math; Ray Bruzan, chemistry; Brian Carrigan, science; Sr. Anna Izydorczyk, student; and Pete Ellertsen (chair), communications and humanities. Kevin Broeckling, dean of students; and John Cicero, academic affairs dean, serve ex officio.
If you have information, comments or feedback, please contact any committee member or Nuts & Bolts editor Pete Ellertsen, in Becker L-16A on the SCI campus, 525-1420 ext. 519 or by e-mail at <pellertsen@sci.edu>.
