As a member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, Millersville University is a comprehensive public institution with a broad mission to provide a full range of exemplary academic programs that sustain the liberal arts tradition. Millersville has garnered recognition for enrolling and challenging a bright and diverse student body, attracting and retaining a distinguished faculty, serving as an intellectual and cultural resource for its region, and managing its resources with responsible stewardship.

Founded as a normal school in 1855, Millersville is located in historic Lancaster County in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country. Most of its 7,300 students are from Pennsylvania. Millersville offers them 51 baccalaureate programs, four associate degree programs, and 22 master's degree programs taught by 323 full-time and 123 part-time faculty members at a student/faculty ratio of 17:1.

Millersville today is highly regarded in this region as a fine institution of outstanding value, offering a quality education at a relatively low cost to its students. Our vision is to become "recognized as a model comprehensive, regional, learning-focused university." There are strong, objective, and compelling indicators of our overall exemplary quality. In both 1998 and 1999 U.S. News & World Report named Millersville the fourth best public regional university in the northeast United States. In 1998 Kiplinger's Personal Finance named us the 87th best public university in the entire country. Millersville ranks first among the 14 State System universities on a set of 24 performance indicators adopted by the Board of Governors. Businesses, organizations, and individuals have invested millions of dollars in Millersville. We have been awarded numerous grants from esteemed organizations. We attract some of the academically best-prepared students in Pennsylvania, and we are so popular among prospective students that we admit less than 60% of our freshman applicants. Our six-year graduation rate is consistently between 65% and 70%, and our six-year graduation rate for students of color is highest in the State System. In a recent survey of Millersville sophomores, 77% said they were satisfied with their overall college experience, compared to 71% of students nationally.

Our achievements also include our mission, vision, and institutional goals, which were developed and refined, in a spirit of collegiality and shared governance, through the participation and support of many members of the University community. These statements are consistent with one another and clearly state our top priorities.

Our many outstanding academic programs are all firmly grounded in a general education curriculum that emphasizes the acquisition and refinement of writing, communication, and critical thinking skills while providing a background in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. We have added curricular options and enhancements to many major programs. Interdisciplinary minors help address the changing needs of our students.

Our faculty work diligently at effective teaching, scholarship, and service to the University. They are supported by policies that facilitate their success, and their work is recognized with good salaries and benefits and collegial working conditions.

Our academic programs are complemented by many cultural and educational opportunities outside the classroom that provide opportunities for intellectual, social, recreational, and leadership growth. Most of these opportunities are open to residents of our region. The University climate is generally regarded as inclusive and supportive of those of diverse backgrounds and lifestyles.

A number of developments in the past five years have helped us make significant progress in achieving our vision. The successful completion of our first-ever capital campaign has brought us $27.5 million in new resources. We have made major enhancements to our facilities, constructing two new buildings for our natural science programs, a Best Western inn and student housing and transforming existing buildings into state-of-the-art facilities for our communications and English programs and dining. Lyle Hall's transformation into a student services facility has brought together many key services previously scattered across campus, giving students more access to them. We have developed our first capital facilities master plan in over 20 years, and we are making plans to renovate our existing social sciences, business administration, industrial technology, and natural science facilities. We have created a new Information Technology division, headed by a vice president, that has led to major enhancements to information technology support. This has led to new pedagogies, greater library access, new and improved instructional facilities that integrate technology into the learning process, and a new integrated administrative and academic data management system. The General Education curriculum required of all degree-seeking undergraduates has undergone review and modification. And there is a new emphasis on academic outcomes assessment that has already led to tangible improvements to many of our academic programs.

This comprehensive self-study reflects the work and contributions of over 550 members of the University since early 1997. It is organized around the University vision's six themes: (1) strong, responsive student programs for academic and personal growth (separate chapters address academic programs, faculty, student life programs, and support services for students), (2) information technology, (3) equity, fairness, and inclusiveness, (4) community service, (5) effective management, and (6) resource development. We intend that this self-study will serve as a working document, not a report to be completed and then forgotten. The self-study process has given us a systematic opportunity not only to assess and evaluate but also to look ahead.

The self-study concludes with 24 recommendations that we make to ourselves to strengthen Millersville University further. We pledge to review the relationship among our planning and assessment efforts; growth in academic program initiatives; the faculty recruitment and hiring process; and support for technologies and instructional equipment. We pledge to strengthen policies and procedures for faculty evaluation, tenure, and promotion; academic advisement; the recruitment and retention of students and employees of color; and tutoring in writing across the disciplines. We pledge to develop a more predictable funding formula and ways to encourage faculty to integrate information technology into the teaching/learning process. We pledge to continue sustaining an atmosphere of openness and collegiality and implementing the capital facilities master plan. We further pledge to institutionalize systematic academic outcomes assessment; identify freshman year experience models; implement the recommendations of our Student Alcohol Abuse Task Force; award financial aid packages earlier; ensure that students achieve our new technology and information literacy objectives; address the needs of non-traditionally-aged students; nurture a climate that perceives committee service as rewarding and rewarded; and plan future endowment growth to reflect our most pressing needs.