02/17/12 ks

HAYS, Kan. -- At its monthly meeting Thursday in Topeka,the Kansas Board of Regents approved a new mission statement for Fort Hays State University. The revised statement of FHSU's purpose was the result of more than a year of deliberations that included input from faculty, staff,students, alumni and friends of the university.

"As a result of our strategic planning process, our campus became very concerned with the old mission statement and believed it was too long and lacked singular specificity," Dr. Edward H. Hammond, FHSU president, said during a news conference Friday on the university campus. "Faculty and staff worked to develop a new and shorter mission statement.The new statement indicates our primary responsibility for providing accessible quality education for the purpose of developing engaged global citizens."

The new mission statement: "Fort Hays State University provides accessible quality education to Kansas, the nation, and the world through an innovative community of teacher-scholars and professionals to develop engaged global citizen-leaders."

Dr. Chris Crawford, assistant provost for quality management, chaired the University Mission Task Force. "A university mission statement defines what the institution does in terms of education, research and public service," he said. "It encapsulates how those services are provided, how the institution competes and suggests its core values."

The task force used a survey to gather feedback from various campus constituencies and then conducted focus groups to fine-tune the information it received. The revised mission statement was completed by the end of the fall 2011 semester, as scheduled, and then submitted to the Regents.

President Hammond put together the University Mission Task Force in the spring semester of 2011 and charged it with reviewing and revising the mission statement, which had remained largely unchanged since the late 1980s.

"The charge to the task force was to create a mission statement relevant for the university in 2012 and beyond, and a statement that would capture the most important elements of what we do in a briefer form -- perhaps even on the back of a business card," Crawford said.

There view of the FHSU mission statement was spurred in part by the university's accreditation process. In 2000, with the support of the Kansas Board of Regents, FHSU embraced a new model of accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission called the Academic Quality Improvement Program. The AQIP process allows member institutions to adopt the guiding principles of continuous quality improvement as their guiding force, and institutional mission serves as the foundation for judging success.

In addition to Crawford, the members of the University Mission Task Force included Todd Powell, general counsel and executive assistant to the president; Dr. Joey Linn, associate vice president for student affairs and registrar; Dennis King, director of the Virtual College and learning technologies; Curtis Hammeke, athletic director; Dr. Paul Faber, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; Dr. Chapman Rackaway, associate professor of political science and president of the Faculty Senate; Dr. Jeff Burnett, associate professor of health and human performance; Dr. Rita Hauck, associate professor of technology studies; and Tyler Thompson, president of the Student Government Association.