An exemplary liberal arts-based education
All Millersville students-whether in a liberal arts or a pre-professional major-must complete a liberal-arts-based General Education curriculum that constitutes nearly half of their degree requirements. As discussed in Chapter 3, we are collecting evidence of the strength and quality of our General Education curriculum.
Preparing students to engage in productive and contributive lives as professionals
Millersville's 98% employment rate of 1996-1997 graduates was the third highest in the State System. This is important evidence of the preparation our students receive and the esteem in which employers hold Millersville University.
Many of our academic programs require or encourage internships, cooperative education experiences, field practica, service learning projects, and research activities in which students apply their learning to pragmatic challenges, often with the collaborative advisement of both faculty and established professionals.
A comprehensive array of meritorious baccalaureate and selected graduate programs
We fulfill this with a broad range of well-enrolled programs that span the arts, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and professions, as is fitting for a comprehensive university serving the diverse community of southeastern Pennsylvania.
Unlike many of our peers, Millersville does not specialize in a handful of programs of study. Our enrollments are more evenly dispersed among our programs than at other State System universities. For example, only 41% of Millersville students major in teacher education, business, and the social sciences, compared to 55% at Bloomsburg, 52% at Indiana, and 51% at California. Millersville has an unusually large number of majors in a broad variety of particularly challenging programs. We have more majors in biology, mathematics, and the physical sciences than any other State System university, and we have more majors in computer science, industrial technology, and foreign languages than any other State System university save one. This is all evidence that Millersville has a truly comprehensive array of meritorious programs.
Millersville assesses the quality of its academic programs through several means, including academic outcomes assessment initiatives and, for a number of programs, specialized accreditation (see Chapter 3). These efforts ensure that our academic programs indeed remain "meritorious": central to our mission, relevant to the needs and demands of our students, consistent with disciplinary criteria of excellence, and appropriately productive and cost effective.
Preparing students to live in an increasingly diverse, multicultural, and technologically complex society
Millersville has taken many steps to offer a rich and diverse curriculum and to serve as a model of a pluralistic community (see Chapter 8). Our diverse faculty, staff and student body are catalyzing expanding breadth and variety in curricular content, teaching pedagogy, cultural events, and social experiences.
In enrollment of students of color, Millersville has ranked third among State System universities for each of the past four years, after Cheyney, an historically African-American university, and West Chester, located close to Philadelphia. Our six-year graduation rate for students of color has been highest in the System for the past two years (47% and 48%) and has shown the greatest four-year improvement.
Millersville's 1998-1999 percentage of faculty who were of color was 14%, second highest in the State System after Cheyney, and our percentage of staff who were of color was 19%, third highest in the System. These figures are important evidence of our commitment to providing a comfortable environment to students of color and a multicultural environment for all our students.
Excellence in teaching
We clearly and consistently reaffirm teaching excellence through our faculty recruitment criteria, tenure and promotion practices and policies, and faculty development programs (see Chapter 4):
Personal, social, and cultural growth
We offer a broad array of opportunities for students to maximize their development (see Chapter 5).
An intellectual and cultural resource to the regional community
As will be discussed in Chapter 9, we offer our region many opportunities for intellectual and cultural enrichment. Our broadening involvement in the business and public sector is occasioning new partnerships and collaborations for the good of our students and the community.
It would be misleading to suggest that all our constituencies are equally supportive of Millersville's sense of purpose and mission. While our region strongly supports the University with healthy enrollments, active program collaborations, and generous financial support, a 1998 report sponsored by the Pennsylvania Association of Scholars and the Commonwealth Foundation-two highly conservative think tanks-shows that some parts of the Commonwealth do not share our vision of our central mission. "The Core Curricula of Pennsylvania State System and State-Related Universities: Are Pennsylvania's Students Receiving the Fundamentals of a College Education?" called for a core curriculum focused on Western traditions in the liberal arts and criticized us for not providing such a curriculum. Such criticisms challenge us to articulate clearly and forcefully our mission, vision, and goals; to provide convincing evidence that the implementation of our mission produces graduates headed toward successful careers, valued community citizenry, and rich, responsible personal lives; and to continue our on-going critical review of our curricula.
|