Framing Concepts: The Coordinate Campuses : Transforming the U

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Strategic Positioning Report
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The University of Minnesota Crookston seeks to become Northwestern Minnesota’s preferred provider of high-value, polytechnic undergraduate education that prepares diverse and deserving learners for rewarding careers and better lives.

UMC strives to enhance the well-being of the region by offering outcome-oriented, teaching-focused, polytechnic professional programs that prepare graduates for career success and for community leadership in a multi-racial and multicultural world; deploy innovative technology-based formats and delivery systems so all ambitious and intellectually curious students can acquire a University of Minnesota education; generate and preserve knowledge, understanding, and creativity by conducting high quality applied research and scholarly work with an emphasis on the needs of Northwestern Minnesota, but with potential application across the state, nation, and world; and extend, exchange, and apply knowledge that enriches society and solves problems.

The University of Minnesota Duluth serves Northeastern Minnesota, the state, and the nation as a medium-sized, broad-based university dedicated to excellence in all its programs and operations. As a university community in which knowledge is sought as well as taught, its faculty recognize the importance of scholarship and service, the intrinsic value of research, and the significance of a primary commitment to quality instruction.

Central to the mission of UMD is high quality teaching nurtured by the research and artistic efforts of its faculty. This undergraduate focus is not at the exclusion of graduate programs, but with the keen expectation that UMD’s selected graduate and professional programs generally will mesh with and support its mission and focus on the undergraduate learning experience. Further, UMD acknowledges its Sea Grant designation and obligations to the history of the land grant university. UMD values and provides an inclusive, diverse community, with special emphasis on American Indian education.

The programmatic focus of UMD is on the core liberal arts and sciences, maintaining a strong commitment to professional programs in the sciences and engineering, the arts, business, education, and medicine. Defined future development will include strengthening the core liberal arts and sciences, K-12 professional development in education, and strengthened relationships with regional and Iron Range community colleges. Maintenance of a high quality residential learning environment makes a critical contribution to the strength of the undergraduate learning environment.

Ultimately, UMD’s challenge is to provide innovative solutions to the issues challenging the future of Northeastern Minnesota, to make a difference in the lives of people in this state and elsewhere, and to contribute meaningfully to the quality of life through improving public policy and finding solutions to those problems that impact our lives.

The mission of the University of Minnesota Morris is to provide an undergraduate liberal education of uncompromising rigor to students from around the region, the nation and the world. This tightly focused mission as a public honors college has been at the core of the College since it opened its doors in September 1960.

It is UMM’s vision to be the very best public liberal arts college in America, a position UMM arguably holds today, but which it strives to harden and to make more visible. UMM values students who exhibit high academic potential and high motivation, and who are hard working and self-starters; faculty who excel as undergraduate teachers and successfully pursue a serious scholarly agenda, with measurable results; and staff who understand their important role in the educational process and do their work with prideful excellence.

UMM’s culture is characterized by an unwavering commitment to the liberal arts and to undergraduate learning and teaching, significant diversity (especially recognizing Native American heritage), the thoughtful integration of the curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular aspects of the student experience, and service to the community. The UMM experience requires a faculty dedicated to excellent classroom teaching and significant scholarship, and a curriculum traditional in its basic shape, but innovative in many of its particulars.

As a public liberal arts college, UMM is committed to offering access to students from all economic, social, and cultural backgrounds. UMM is deeply connected to its region and its people. UMM’s population of students, faculty and staff must reflect the diversity of the public in its region, state and nation. UMM will maintain and enhance its national status even as it strengthens its deep regional links.

The University of Minnesota Rochester, through relationships with other universities and colleges, meets the higher education needs of Southeastern Minnesota by providing and promoting academic programs, research, and outreach. In a unique collaboration with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, UMR provides leadership for baccalaureate and graduate programs that reflect the University of Minnesota’s tradition of excellence. UMR will be a distinctive University of Minnesota branch known for programming in health sciences and technology.

As its mission, UMR provides a strong higher education foundation in health professions, technology, business, education, and social services; responds to the educational, economic, research, and cultural needs of Southeastern Minnesota; and is establishing itself as the regional higher education institution of choice for students pursuing career preparation in selected health science and technology professions.

As a provision of the 2002 revised agreement between the University of Minnesota and MnSCU, UMR is responsible for providing academic leadership for all future upper division and post-baccalaureate graduate/professional degree programs in Rochester. New baccalaureate and graduate programs for the public higher education institutions are to be developed and operationalized by UMR or through contract with UMR. UMR has built a well-defined scope of educational offerings at the baccalaureate and graduate levels, in response to the educational needs of Southeastern Minnesota. Emphasis will continue to be given to development of programming in areas that relate directly to the region’s economic vitality – health sciences and technology – including partnerships with the Mayo Clinic and IBM, and other area businesses and organizations.