BSU Catalog Home

Section I

BSU Mission Statement

Bemidji State University, since its founding in 1919, has been a center of intellectual, cultural, social, and economic life in northern Minnesota. Beginning as a small teacher's college, Bemidji State has grown into a comprehensive university, part of a diverse, statewide system of higher education.

As its primary strength and function, Bemidji State University delivers, at the baccalaureate and graduate levels, substantial and affordable educational opportunities that enhance student access to leadership roles and encourage responsible citizenship. Thus poised to lead its students into the twenty-first century, the University further recognizes that sweeping changes in society and technology call for new ideas and new skills, yet ones ever more grounded in shared human values.

In order to fulfill its mission and its responsibilities as a public university, Bemidji State University will:

1. Promote an uncompromising pursuit of knowledge, excellence, civic responsibility, and environmental respect.
2. Focus on student success by offering high quality baccalaureate and graduate programs designed to build analytical skills and critical thinking abilities; by developing responsible educational goals and career planning through a heightened commitment to faculty advising; and by instilling in students the habits of scholarship and life-long learning.
3. Offer a pleasing and safe campus community enriched by native heritage and world cultures; united by human values centered on civility and mutual respect; and underpinned by facilities necessary for education in the twenty-first century.
4. Develop a high-quality, diverse faculty and staff engaged in on-going professional achievement and revitalization, and in innovative partnerships with education, business, and industry.
5. Incorporate new technologies by exploring, developing, and adapting to a human scale the capacities that give the University's students, faculty, and staff access to the world, and give the world access to the University.
6. Encourage a varied educational experience beyond the classroom through community service, internships, and travel, while providing a campus life rich in unique opportunities for developing a heightened knowledge of the self, others, and the world.
7. Ensure that each student who graduates can communicate effectively in writing and speaking, can distinguish knowledge from information, and is prepared to take her or his position as a responsible and productive member of the human family in a global society.
8. Develop increased support among external constituencies, for purposes of a deepened institutional stability and heightened flow of ideas.