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Mercer University Mission Statement Mercer University is a faith-based institution of higher learning that seeks to achieve excellence and scholarly discipline in the fields of liberal learning and professional knowledge. The University is guided by the historic principles of religious and intellectual freedom, while affirming religious and moral values that arise from the Judeo-Christian understanding of the world.
Mercer University Goals
- To offer undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs based upon a strong liberal arts foundation.
- To support a highly qualified faculty that is student and teaching oriented and is engaged in scholarly, research, and professional activities.
- To foster independent and critical thinking and a continuing interest in learning.
- To foster intellectual and spiritual freedom in an environment that encourages tolerance, compassion, understanding, and responsibility.
- To offer a variety of intellectual, cultural, recreational, and spiritual activities designed to enlarge capacity for improved judgment and moral, ethical, and spiritual growth.
- To encourage the enrollment of qualified persons from diverse backgrounds and situations.
- To contribute campus resources in partnership with other institutions and agencies to improve the educational, social, and economic development of the community.
- To administer services efficiently and effectively to support the University’s instructional, research, and public service programs.
Mercer University Vision One of the finest private universities in the Southeast, Mercer University will be nationally renowned for providing a dynamic, diverse, and rigorous education where every student matters and learns to make a difference.
Mercer is held together in conversation by a love of learning, our respect for each other, and excellence within our disciplines. We celebrate our Baptist heritage, a tradition that insists on an open search for truth, religious freedom, and service to others.
Achieving this vision will take widespread collaboration and responsible stewardship as we:
- Foster a lively and inclusive intellectual, social, and spiritual community;
- Engage students in challenging, holistic, and transformational learning throughout the University;
- Infuse liberal learning in professional programs and connect undergraduate students to graduate and professional programs;
- Cultivate the virtues of practical wisdom and civic leadership;
- Emerge as the premier source of professional leadership in the Southeast;
- Attract and nurture outstanding staff and creative educators who are also first-rate scholars and practitioners;
- Make contributions on the frontiers of knowledge through distinctive research agendas;
- Transform communities locally and globally through University-community partnerships, service-learning, and volunteerism; and
- Become an international center for dialogue and inquiry about faith perspectives.
Unit Mission The Tift College of Education’s mission is built upon Mercer University’s mission as well as the Conceptual Framework theme. The Transforming Practitioner embodies and carries out the guiding principles of the University’s mission: search for truth, independence of thought, diversity of viewpoints, and ethical and moral decision-making. The Transforming Practitioner also embodies the unit’s mission: blending theory with practice.
Tift College of Education, established in 1995 as the School of Education, was renamed in 2001 to honor the legacy of Tift College and the Tift family. The College is committed to preparing candidates to serve as teachers and educational leaders in the schools of our state, nation, and world and is committed to the pursuit of excellence in every aspect of educator preparation.
The mission of the Tift College of Education is to prepare students to blend theory with practice, to think critically, and to interact effectively in a technologically complex, global society. To accomplish this mission, the Tift College of Education offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs and educational services designed to meet the needs of diverse students and of the professional education community. The following Tift College goals support the mission:
- Reflect an understanding of education as a broad and lifelong process under girded by the tradition of liberal learning.
- Provide and promote academic programs that will respond effectively to geographic, professional, and cultural communities.
- Cultivate a community of learning characterized by tolerance, compassion, mutual respect, and personal, social, and environmental responsibility.
- Provide an academic environment that enhances the ability and faculty to synthesize theory and practice.
- Develop a knowledge base and skills that enable students to interact effectively in a diverse, technologically-complex society.
- Create an environment for the development of critical thinking skills.
- Consider viewpoints other than one’s own, including viewpoints associated with other cultures and traditions.
- Commit to live as an engaged and informed citizen.
- Reflect on one’s life and learning experience.
- Develop a respect for intellectual and religious freedom.
Unit Vision At Mercer University, the Tift College of Education (the Professional Education Unit) envisions the preparation of effective teachers and educational leaders who are willing to grow and to change—to transform—continually throughout their careers, while also seeking to stimulate and facilitate transformation within their students. Teachers and educational leaders who appreciate the importance of personal and professional development view transformation as a vital and exciting part of living, and such teachers and leaders have the power to effect change in students, thereby transforming them and helping them to become life-long learners who can apply their knowledge meaningfully and responsibly in a continually changing world. Needs of students are increasing and becoming more varied. Additionally, knowledge is not stagnant, but is forever increasing. An educator who knows only what is known today, who cannot adapt to the changing world, and who lacks the abilities to reflect, collaborate, and think critically will be unable to provide transformational learning experiences that will allow students to respond to tomorrow. The education process should provide the means for transforming students to be responsible learners who continue to grow and change and use their knowledge in meaningful ways in society. In short, Tift College of Education faculty members share a vision that the most effective teachers and educational leaders are “Transforming Practitioners”; they seek not only to effect transformation within themselves, but also to link the student and the learning process and to transform the lives of all students.
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