Mission, Vision & Values Statement

Anderson University is a Christ-centered community that presents Jesus as the Christ and as the ultimate model for personal behavior. The unifying principle of Anderson University is a Christian vision of life in which community participants are encouraged to develop a Christian worldview and live up to the high calling of the Great Commandments which tells us to love God with our hearts, with our minds, and with our souls, and to love others completely. We seek to build an academic community where men and women can be lovingly and gracefully introduced to an understanding of God, His creation and grace, and humanity’s place of great privilege and responsibility in God’s world.

Anderson University is dedicated to provide a challenging commitment to Liberal Arts. Anderson University is a comprehensive institution that provides a challenging education. We offer a variety of majors and concentrations in both the liberal arts and the professional disciplines. All programs provide the student with a rigorous and engaging learning experiences that emphasizes the knowledge, intellectual skills, and conceptual frameworks central to the discipline. A central, cohering value of the Anderson University academic experience is that each field of study includes a rich core of liberal arts courses in the foundational fields of human knowledge and achievement. These courses comprise the requisite knowledge to facilitate the development of skills in critical thinking, interpersonal relationships, ethical reflection, and an appreciation of the fine arts as integral to an educated citizenry.

Anderson University is a people-focused community where individuals are valued and where all participants seek to honor one another through words, behavior, and a commitment to each person’s success. Here, people are encouraged to value individuals and the creative possibilities that lie within each of us. Together, we dedicate ourselves to the values and success of Anderson University.

Anderson University is committed to recruiting students who are supportive of the mission of the university as a Christian institution and who can benefit from the academic programs and student services offered. Our goal is to recruit a student body broadly representative of the cultural and ethnic diversity of our region and characterizes the society in which graduates will live and work. The University seeks to offer programs appropriate for resident students, commuting students, traditional university age students, and adult students, as well as graduate students. Moreover, Anderson University has a primary goal to provide a safe and supportive environment that fosters the development of the whole person and nurtures respect for the worth of the individual, the sanctity of life, and for all God’s creation.

Anderson University is a quality-driven community where a commitment to continuous quality improvement enhances all aspects of the university, as well as improves the effectiveness of individuals in carrying out our responsibilities. Being a quality-driven institution requires us to be a “learning organization” wherein we constantly learn from our own organizational experience, we stay abreast of and learn from best practices in the larger higher education community, and we continuously strive to strengthen and add value to our institution so it can function at its best and serve its stakeholders to the fullest of its potential.

Anderson University is a future-directed community. We seek to be an agile institution that continuously identifies, evaluates, and if appropriate, seizes upon windows of organizational opportunities in a timely manner to the extent our resources will allow. As stewards of our institution, we seek to maximize all our resources to fulfill our common mission and vision.

Anderson University seeks to equip men and women to have the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to impact their communities and the world through their professional contributions and spiritual gifts. Our goal is to develop servant leaders who live out their daily lives at home and at work with a deep and profound commitment to the tenets of Jesus Christ. Most importantly, servant leaders are first and foremost servants. They are affirmative builders of a better society. They understand the value of effective listening and are skilled communicators. Servant leaders have empathy for others and are accepting of diverse people. Servant leaders have power through a voluntary commitment of others. They are able to view events and situations from a broad perspective yet also spend time in the trenches and understand the practical and realistic. They help others grow to become wiser and more independent and ultimately to become servant leaders themselves.