Universities on a Mission

Missouri University of Science and Technology is a public research university in nearly the dead center of the US. Residing in my hometown where I grew up, and where I earned my bachelors degree, I have watched MS&T for most of my life. It is very similar to Virginia Tech as an engineering college that is a central point within a small town. Their mission statement reads:

Missouri S&T integrates education, research and application to create and convey knowledge that serves our state and helps solve the world’s great challenges.

MS&T’s idea of blending education, research, and application is one that I have noticed being done, and I think it rings true in the most visible parts of the university. They are very proud of being competitive in the design teams for solar car and smart homes, but MS&T has always had tunnel vision that is hyper-focused on presenting the best engineering students and work. There is little mixing of different subjects outside of engineering, though. And the mission statement still holds even if that is the case, because it doesn’t explicitly mention interdisciplinary work. MS&T can still accomplish so much without it, especially highly specialized industry work and deep research and of course, pass this knowledge along.

University of Washington has an expanded mission that can be more explicit about how it accomplishes its mission. This is another public research university, with focus on engineering like MS&T, but also includes research in medicine. The campus in Seattle, Washington USA welcomes students with this mission:

The primary mission of the University of Washington is the preservation, advancement, and dissemination of knowledge. The University preserves knowledge through its libraries and collections, its courses, and the scholarship of its faculty. It advances new knowledge through many forms of research, inquiry and discussion; and disseminates it through the classroom and the laboratory, scholarly exchanges, creative practice, international education, and public service. As one of the nation’s outstanding teaching and research institutions, the University is committed to maintaining an environment for objectivity and imaginative inquiry and for the original scholarship and research that ensure the production of new knowledge in the free exchange of facts, theories, and ideas.

One striking comparison between the two is how UW’s mission strictly defines knowledge. This enhanced definition gives the impression that the university does value interdisciplinary work and is more communicative. MS&T’s mission might seem relatively bookish, but this may be just a product of the larger size of UW’s mission. It surprised me that UW’s mission encourages discourse for the purpose of creating and spreading ideas. This makes me think that UW is more accepting of many ‘gray’ answers, and that MS&T may have the perspective of finding a single ‘correct’ answer to solving the world’s problems.

I think looking closely at these mission statements can give some good insight into the culture of the university, but should be done carefully. Today, there are many universities masquerading as being more prominent or more valuable than they actually are. These deceptive universities would likely not hesitate to present an entirely fictitious mission to hide their identity as much as possible.