CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
MISSION STATEMENT

IDENTITY

California University of Pennsylvania, a comprehensive regional institution of higher education and a member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, is a diverse, caring and scholarly learning community dedicated to excellence in the liberal arts, science and technology, and professional studies that is devoted to building character and careers, broadly defined. The University is inspired by its core values of integrity, civility, and responsibility and is guided by its bill of rights and responsibilities: We have the right to safety and security, we have the responsibility to ensure the safety and security of others; We have the right to be treated with respect, we have the responsibility to treat others with respect; We have the right to expect the best, we have the responsibility to give our best; We have the right to be treated fairly, we have the responsibility to treat others fairly.

MISSION: BUILDING CHARACTER AND CAREERS

To advance its ultimate mission of building the character and careers of students, the University shall focus its efforts on three goals: student achievement and success, institutional excellence, and community service. These interrelated ends will be facilitated by the following means: high quality faculty, students, programs, and facilities. These means, in turn, will be funded through an energetic program of resource acquisition and stewardship.

VISION

Be recognized as the best comprehensive public university in America

What does this mean?

• Offer an exceptional, one-of-a-kind character and career-building experience; 
• Focus character-building on the University’s three core values and four rights and responsibilities; 
• Define career-building broadly to include life-wide (multiple life roles) and life-long (legacy) aspects; 
• Recruit and retain a distinguished faculty who challenge and mentor students to attain their fullest potential; 
• Recruit and retain a talented, diverse, and highly motivated student body; 
• Maintain an administrative staff dedicated to the highest professional standards and service; 
• Maintain a learning community known for its academic excellence, intellectual rigor, and civil discourse; 
• Instill not just learning but the love of learning; 
• Be widely known as a center for thought, inquiry, dialogue, and action in matters of character and leadership; 
• Maintain a campus of natural and architectural beauty featuring state-of-the-art facilities and equipment; 
• Reflect a special mission in science and technology through programs in science, technology, and applied engineering, as well as through emphasis on technology and information literacy across the curriculum; 
• Be widely known for high quality undergraduate and selected masters level graduate programs; 
• Foster increasingly higher admissions criteria, academic quality, and scholarly expectations; 
• Incorporate continuous improvement into all programs and activities to ensure competitive excellence; 
• Prepare students for the world of work or further education from multiple locations through multiple technologies in order to meet the ever changing needs of the Commonwealth and the larger world; 
• Sustain a reputation for the University’s academic excellence, its daring and entrepreneurial spirit, and the integrity, success, and loyalty of its graduates; 
• Instill a culture of philanthropy among students, faculty, staff, and alumni; 
• Create an ever larger community of supporters and an endowment that will perpetuate the work of the University and enable constant innovation and renewal.

LEGACY

Founded in 1852, and now in its second 150 years of service, the University is committed above all to academic excellence and intellectual rigor in the context of personal and institutional integrity, civility, and responsibility.

Adopted by the Council of Trustees of California University of Pennsylvania
on June 4, 2003.