Wesleyan’s sense of mission has not changed since 2010 when the mission statement below was adopted by the Board of Trustees:
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.
The writing of this statement was meant to capture Wesleyan’s sense of mission rather than mark a new departure, but the phrasing naturally was new. The president, in particular, has emphasized in his remarks the phrase “boldness, rigor, and practical idealism,” pointing to a productive tension between “boldness” and “rigor” and between “practical” and “idealism” as signaling something of Wesleyan’s distinctiveness. The mission statement is being increasingly, if slowly, internalized by the Wesleyan community. Last year, for example, the Allbritton Center emphasized its own commitment to “practical idealism” in its comment on the first draft of the university-wide planning document Beyond 2020: Strategies for Wesleyan.
The University’s sense of mission and purposes has continued to guide its ongoing work and new endeavors. For example, the creation since 2012 of three additional interdisciplinary colleges (bringing our total to six) — the College of East Asian Studies, the College of Film and the Moving Image, and the College of Integrated Sciences — was designed to enable distinguished scholar-teachers to work closely with students, taking advantage of fluidity among disciplines to explore the world with a variety of tools. Student Affairs has worked to create more faculty-student partnerships through its Residential College, Faculty Fellows, and Learning-Living Seminars programs. With respect to creating a diverse, energetic community, Academic Affairs – together with the Office for Equity & Inclusion – 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. Building a diverse, energetic student body has been a primary goal of Admissions, and since 2010 the number of international students has nearly doubled and geographical diversity within the United States among the student body has increased. The Posse Veteran Scholars program (ten veterans enrolled per class since 2013) has brought very different life experiences and perspectives into the mix, and our nine-year partnership with Questbridge continues to bring an average of 33 new first-generation, low-income students Quest Scholars to campus each year. Recent decisions to go test-optional and to provide increased access for undocumented students should be helpful in constructing a diverse student body. With respect to encouraging “independence of mind” on our famously liberal 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. And “generosity of spirit” is evident in any number of recent initiatives, from the increased support by Student Affairs of first-generation, low-income students, to the intensified work of the Office for Equity & Inclusion, to the various refugee support and sponsorship programs sponsored by the University.