Artifact

Rockford vs. Wisconsin-Madison

Timothy Klagues

Northern Illinois University

 Introduction

Mission statements allow colleges/universities to demonstrate what they value and the

type of education that a student will receive. These statements also allow prospective faculty to

look at the institutions values to see if that is an institution they can see themselves working at.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze two mission statements. This paper also serves to

compare and contrast between these two mission statements.

Schools

Rockford University

The first mission statement that will be analyzed is Rockford University. Rockford

University started out as Rockford Female Seminary. It was founded in 1847. After reviewing

the mission statement, the Rockford University website (2019) states that “Our mission is to

educate men and women to lead responsible lives by means of a curriculum grounded in liberal

arts learning and complemented and extended by professional and practical experience.”

Rockford University is an institution that bases their educational ideals around a liberal arts

education. Liberal arts education is a type of education that involves smaller institutions and

facilitates close interactions between students and faculty. This type of education also allows

students to focus on one subject area or multiple subject areas. It also teaches students how to

collaborate and work well with others along with the ability to solve complex problems. This

mission statement provides readers with some of their values. Some of these values include:

having a smaller institution, smaller class sizes, higher student to faculty ratio, and collaboration

between students, peers, and faculty. The institution also values helping students gain experience
in the work force by having them complete practical and professional experience. The next

mission statement that will be analyzed in this paper is from a research institution.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

The second mission statement that will be discussed is the mission statement from the

University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was founded in 1848. One component of the mission

statement that talks about the school’s values deals with diversity. According to the University of

Wisconsin-Madison website (2019) “It also seeks to attract and serve students from diverse

social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds and to be sensitive and responsive to those groups

which have been underserved in higher education.” This states that the university wants to

incorporate diversity into their institution. The diversity that is being referred to in this part of the

mission statement is students’ from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. This is

what the school values, however, does the school value diversity and being sensitive and

responsive to the groups who have been underserved? The university talks about goals to help

fulfill its mission. What is missing from these goals is what they are currently doing to be

sensitive and responsive to the groups who have not been treated equally in higher education.

The goals also do not mention how they are addressing diversity. It may look like the school

values diversity on their campus, but it might only be surface diversity.

Comparison

After reviewing these institutions mission statements, there are some similarities that they

share. These institutions are similar in preparing students in life after college with the ever

evolving society. Both of these institutions value using academics along with co-curricular
activities to help students prepare for life post-graduation. Close collaboration between students,

faculty, and peers are also seen in these two mission statements. These institutions believe that

having close interaction with peers along with faculty can help with learning outcomes for

students.

Conclusion

These are the two institutions that were analyzed in this paper. The mission statements

from these institutions allowed readers to see what the schools in this paper valued along with

the type of education the school offers. The first institution looked at was a liberal arts

institution, while the other institution analyzed is a research institution. Readers were able to see

what these institutions valued and the type of education that these institutions provide. This

paper also showed readers how colleges/universities can share the same values with another

institution.
 References

Mission. University of Wisconsin-Madison. (2019, October 7th). Retrieved from

https://www.wisc.edu/about/mission/

Quick Facts. Rockford University. (2019, October 7th). Retrieved from

https://www.rockford.edu/about/quickfacts/