Draft submitted by Standard 1 Committee: Charles Salas (chair), Amin Gonzalez, Roger Grant, Renell Wynn
Standard One: The institution’s mission and purposes are appropriate to higher education, consistent with its charter or other operating authority, and implemented in a manner that complies with the Standards of the New England Commission of Higher Education. The institution’s mission gives direction to its activities and provides a basis for the assessment and enhancement of the institution’s effectiveness.
Description
The following mission statement, created as part of the last reaccreditation process and adopted by the Trustees in 2010, can be found on the University Leadership webpage and features prominently in strategic planning:
Wesleyan University is dedicated to providing an education in the liberal arts that is characterized by boldness, rigor, and practical idealism. At Wesleyan, distinguished scholar-teachers work closely with students, taking advantage of fluidity among disciplines to explore the world with a variety of tools. The University seeks to build a diverse, energetic community of students, faculty, and staff who think critically and creatively, and who value independence of mind and generosity of spirit.
Appraisal
Until 2010, the university had had no formal mission statement. Indeed, there was resistance to having one at all for fear of characterizing Wesleyan in ways that would be limiting. (In recognition of this resistance, our last fundraising campaign was given the open-ended title “This Is Why” to encourage alumni to characterize the university in their own ways.) Historically, the closest thing to a mission statement had been the words of Wesleyan’s first president Willbur Fisk: “Education should be directed with reference to two objects—the good of the individual, and the good of the world.” These words, which may be considered a presupposition of the official mission statement, made an indelible impression and continue to be referred to today, although now the phrase “practical idealism” from the current mission statement is frequently heard. That phrase, used by Wesleyan’s 11th president Victor Butterfield, characterizes many campus activities, including the university’s civic action plan and the “Wesleyan Engage 2020” initiative.
The President has pointed to a productive tension in the mission statement between “boldness” and “rigor” and between “practical” and “idealism” as signaling something of Wesleyan’s distinctiveness. In 2020-21, he conducted a series of strategic planning conversations with departments and committees across the university – conversations that began with asking for thoughts on what makes Wesleyan distinctive. Top of mind was its scholar-teacher model – which is based on the premise that a robust liberal arts education is most effectively provided by instructors who actively contribute to the state of knowledge and practice in their respective fields. This model continues to be supported by relatively light teaching loads, a generous sabbatical policy, and a program of grants in support of scholarship and pedagogical innovation. In the sciences, graduate programs facilitate the conduct of high-level laboratory-based research that further bolsters the connection between scholarship and undergraduate education. Naturally, there remains a tension between the intellectual independence and focus fostered by the scholar-teacher model and the goal of ensuring a broad and coherent education in the liberal arts. (See Standard Eight.)
Today, interdisciplinarity is hardly unusual in liberal education, but Wesleyan’s tradition of interdisciplinarity, which began in the 1950s with the College of Social Studies and College of Letters, is viewed here as distinctive – and is alluded to in the mission statement’s “taking advantage of fluidity among disciplines to explore the world with a variety of tools.” While the benefits of interdisciplinarity are well understood here, disciplinary expertise is often viewed as their precondition. The tension between commitment to traditional departments and the interdisciplinary, experimental ethos can be productive – or not – and there is concern about the pressures upon junior faculty when their interests and energies move across disciplines. The degree to which interdisciplinarity should arise organically from faculty interests or be stimulated “top down” is an open question. On the one hand, interdisciplinary projects cannot succeed without naturally occurring interest from the faculty; on the other hand, existing administrative structures often disincentivize working across disciplines. Thus there is an important role for top-down support of infrastructure to facilitate interdisciplinary work, as well as to prevent existing structures of academic power from stifling interdisciplinary work. The need to offer traditional and still vibrant modes of inquiry is in uneasy balance with the desire to provide new academic offerings addressing contemporary concerns. Faculty who wish to design new courses or modify existing ones can turn for support to our Center for Pedagogical Innovation.
Still, since the middle decades of the twentieth century Wesleyan has been an important home for a particular American brand of experimentalism that runs deeply through the research and pedagogical outlook of our faculty. While its historical origins include relationships with pioneering artists and intellectuals—like John Cage and Judith Butler—the contemporary import of experimentalism lives on in our commitment to challenging tradition, skewering hierarchies, and critiquing received norms; bringing rigor to the boldness of experiment. We foster this inherently interdisciplinary perspective in the cross-modal structure of our institutions. The connections of the Center for the Arts to disciplines across the curriculum are considered particularly varied and stimulating, and over the past decade Wesleyan has launched a number of successful interdisciplinary programs: including the College of the Environment, the Allbritton Center for Public Life, the College of East Asian Studies, the College of Film and the Moving Image, and the College of Integrative Sciences, including its Integrated Design, Engineering, & Applied Science (IDEAS) program.
Of course, Wesleyan has far more in common with liberal arts peers than difference, and those looking for distinctiveness may see more than is really there. We have long considered our open curriculum distinctive, though that openness is doubtless less unusual than in the past. Here, traditional curricular “distribution requirements” are replaced by “general educational expectations,” allowing students to take an active role in constructing their own academic programs while encouraging them to pursue a suitably broad-based liberal arts education. In making their course selections with the guidance of faculty (peer advisors help with course registration), students are expected to take at least three courses from at least two different departments in the respective areas of humanities and arts (HA), social and behavioral sciences (SBS), and natural sciences and mathematics (NSM). While fulfilling these expectations is not required for graduation from Wesleyan, some majors and some honors (such as election to Phi Beta Kappa) require their completion. NSM majors are far and away the most likely to fulfill these expectations. Overall, however, it may be admitted that the experience of students with pre-major advising and navigating the open curriculum may not always meet their expectations. (See Standard Eight.)
The mission statement addresses the work of our scholar-teachers, but not theirs alone. As the president frequently reminds staff, “We are all educators.” As part of an exercise, staff in Communications, ITS, the General Counsel, and Admissions reflected on the manifestation of the mission statement’s “boldness, rigor, and practical idealism” in their realms. Admissions staff, for example, saw boldness in their willingness to reassess procedures and policies through different lenses – as evidenced in DACA/Undoc review, test-optional, and Posse partnership. Boldness in the realm of ITS had to do with willingness to reimagine with campus partners how to implement and support digital tools and systems, such as Zoom, ServiceNow, Workforce time, and a new SaaS ERP. The General Counsel saw rigor in the dissemination of key legal principles, policies and procedures throughout the organization in order to affect university culture. The Office of Communications associated rigor with exceptional editing and writing and viewed its story-telling about impactful accomplishments as characterized by practical idealism.
Wesleyan no longer stands out as “Diversity University,” but still considered distinctive here is the degree of attention paid to equity and inclusion – be it the longstanding presence of Upward Bound on campus or the Astronomy Department’s focus on graduate students from underrepresented groups or the attention given to inclusive access in the design of the new Life Sciences Building. From admission to graduation, the University makes every effort to achieve equitable outcomes for all students, regardless of background or identity with attention to the whole individual. Our mission statement highlights building a “diverse, energetic” student body, and this has been a primary goal of the Office of Admission. Geographical diversity has increased; the class of 2025, for example, includes students from 46 states & territories as well as 37 countries. The Posse Veteran Scholars program (10 veterans enrolled per class since 2013) has brought very different life experiences and perspectives into the mix, and our fourteen-year partnership with QuestBridge continues to bring between 25 and 30 new high-achieving, low-income scholars, most of whom are also first-generation, to campus each year. Although the university is now need-aware in admission, it meets 100% of the demonstrated financial need of all admitted students. As a member of the American Talent Initiative which seeks to expand access for low- and moderate-income students, Wesleyan is committed to increasing the Pell-Eligible population of students on campus to 20% or more in the near future. The decisions to go test-optional 8 years ago and to provide increased access for undocumented students (considering them in similar fashion to domestic students) 6 years ago have been helpful in constructing a diverse student body. Both policy changes increased access. Increasing the diversity of the student body has occurred simultaneously with emphasizing an appreciation for difference, starting with the first-year student orientation programs that emphasize community standards of respect for others, and a residential education program that values all students’ identities.
International students add to the diversity of our student body, and since 2010 the number of international students has increased by 45%. The Class of ’14 had 53 international students, and the Class of ’24 had 77. Wesleyan’s embrace of the global – reflected in the recent creation of the Fries Center for Global Studies and the breadth of the languages and musical traditions taught together with the degree of emphasis on intercultural learning – is another characteristic noted by faculty as distinctive.
For its part in creating a diverse community, the Office of Academic Affairs, together with the Office for Equity & Inclusion (OEI), has increased the percentages of women faculty and international faculty, and continues to make strong efforts to recruit faculty of color, creating a new Opportunity Hiring policy for both faculty and staff for this purpose. As of September 2021, ten of the last fourteen tenure-track faculty hires are persons of color. Still, retaining faculty of color has been a problem. In response, Human Resources has been partnering with OEI to diversify the applicant pool for staff positions and to create an inclusive work environment by developing intercultural competencies, increasing awareness of implicit biases, and building skills in communication across difference among all community members.
The mission statement also refers to “independence of mind,” and to encourage that independence on our famously progressive campus, we have raised funds to hire more faculty who represent viewpoints in the conservative range of the spectrum so that students may benefit from a greater diversity of perspectives on matters such as economic development, international relations, the public sphere, and personal freedom.
Are we successful in pursuing our mission? We judge that in any number of ways – from graduation rates and surveys of student satisfaction to the accomplishments of our faculty and alumni – and we try to make that success evident in the stories we tell in such venues as the Wesleyan Connection, Wesleyan Magazine, You Make Us Wesleyan (admitted student web pages) and News@Wes.
Projection
Changes to the Mission statement may be proposed at any time, and, if deemed appropriate, implemented by the Board of Trustees. While we do not see changes in our fundamental mission – to provide an education in the liberal arts that is characterized by boldness, rigor and practical idealism – we pursue that mission in light of changes in the world. For example, our response to political polarization and attempts to delegitimize democracy is to increase our emphasis upon civic preparedness among our students while fostering their capacity to learn from those with whom they disagree. The pandemic too will lead to changes. The shift to remote learning made clear to faculty, many of whom had been distrustful of online learning, the power of technology to make connections to students, and we expect lessons learned to enhance our educational program going forward. Indeed, the new strategic plan calls for the development of Wesleyan__Online, suite of stand alone classes and degree oriented programs. The pandemic also made inequality all the more visible, and we will be making even stronger efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in our community. Key to this will be successful fundraising, reducing reliance on tuition and investing resources in financial aid.
As is suggested by the phrasing of the primary goal of the new strategic plan – “Enhance our distinctive educational program, capitalizing on academic strengths” – we are not anticipating dramatic changes in our educational program. Still, the recent planning conversations have suggested that where teaching and research have traditionally been conducted by individual faculty, they are likely to be more collaborative going forward. Construction is underway on the new Public Affairs Center and art gallery – spaces designed to stimulate more interaction and collaboration among faculty and students.
Foundational to our experimental perspective is a commitment to participatory learning. Wesleyan’s historic gamelan orchestra program is prime example of a participatory culture on campus; no previous knowledge of Indonesian music is required to join this ensemble, but simply a willingness and openness to forms of musical organization. Learning is grounded in doing, and the collective effort is the pedagogical product. This come-as-you are approach is designed to reward engagement rather than preparation and is therefore a key element of ongoing equity and inclusion work. This laboratory-like ethos seems to be growing in appeal across the curriculum, with faculty increasingly interested in team-teaching as well as seeking to involve students in the communal production of knowledge rather than simply its absorption.
Wesleyan has sought to be at the forefront in promoting the value of liberal education (in the short and long terms), and its president has published several books and many articles and op-eds in this effort. That value is not always immediately evident to some, and the new strategic plan makes strengthening connections between liberal learning and life-long learning a primary objective.