USF 1999-2000 Undergraduate Catalog - Page 9

Statement of Institutional Purpose

The University of South Florida is a multi-campus, comprehensive, research university strongly committed to the balanced pursuit of excellent teaching, significant research and useful public service. The University generates and disseminates new insights, knowledge and forms of expression; it prepares students for their personal lives, professional careers and contributions to society; and it serves its external communities through the citizenship and expertise of its faculty, staff, students and graduates.

The University of South Florida is committed to supporting and nurturing the free expression of ideas. It embraces the role of the university as a social critic and conscience and respects and defends the rights of faculty, staff and students to speak out and act responsibly upon the social implications of their knowledge. The University values an intellectually excellent, culturally diverse academic community of faculty, staff, and students. The University strives to provide an educationally challenging environment, within and beyond the classroom, that engages students and faculty in a common inquiry into the values of society and gives them a rational understanding of the need to accept and appreciate differences among people and cultures as a foundation for national and global welfare.

The three traditional activities of teaching, research, and public service are the foundation of the University's mission. In the conduct and delivery of its programs, the University recognizes the special characteristics of its students and the opportunities provided by the location of its campuses in thriving metropolitan areas on Florida's gulf coast. The University gives particular consideration to programs and activities that can build on these advantages to achieve national and international distinction.

As an institution dedicated to excellent teaching, the University's fundamental objective is to evoke in its students a lifelong commitment to learning that enables them to become thoughtful, active, productive and compassionate citizens. The University provides to all undergraduates a strong common curriculum in liberal education that balances the acquisition of general knowledge with the development of intellectual honesty, curiosity, creativity, critical inquiry, and personal values and ethics that include a commitment to advancing the society in which they live. Specialization in the major areas builds upon this strong liberal education and prepares graduates to enter graduate school or to embark directly upon their lives' work. Advanced studies at the graduate and professional level enable students to work with faculty at the forefront of their disciplines, to increase their depth of knowledge and personal achievement and to contribute to the advancement of their professions and the larger society. The University has high expectations of its faculty as inspirational teachers and of its faculty and students as exemplary scholars.

As a comprehensive research university, the University is dedicated to the discovery of new knowledge, insights, and forms of expression through significant innovative research and other creative activity and to the preservation, organization, analysis and synthesis of existing knowledge. As a leading publicly supported university, the University accomplishes its research mission by building on existing program strengths, by fostering effective, cross-disciplinary approaches and by contributing to the resolution of social, cultural, economic, medical and technological challenges facing the largely metropolitan populations of our state and country within the international community of the 21st century.

As an institution serving the region, state and nation, the University actively encourages the use of the expertise of its faculty, staff, and students for the advantage of the larger community–to provide intellectual, cultural, health-related, and social services; to contribute to life-long learning opportunities; and to function as a catalyst for improvements within its immediate cultural, economic, and social context. USF has the assigned responsibility to provide continuing education for a 15-county area.

Within the mission of the total university, the Tampa campus plays the central role. It incorporates a comprehensive range of teaching, research, and service functions and provides essential academic leadership and administrative services for the University's multiple campuses. The missions of the regional campuses at St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Lakeland emphasize programs that respond to demonstrated regional need for undergraduate upper level and master's level education. On a selective basis, regional campuses also undertake program initiatives involving special community interests and resources. The mission of New College at Sarasota is to provide a high quality, undergraduate, liberal arts education. The special strengths of all five campuses contribute to an integrated, diversified, and comprehensive university dedicated to educational quality and leadership.

Overview

Since its beginnings in the late 1950s as a single-campus undergraduate institution, the University of South Florida has become a comprehensive, multi-campus research university serving more than 34,000 headcount students in 10 colleges on four campuses. USF is home to medical clinics and hospitals, a major mental health research institute, and two public broadcasting stations. The University employs more than 1,860 full-time faculty and generates more than $135 million annually in sponsored research. Its endowment exceeds $185 million and includes 45 endowed chairs. USF faculty are making national contributions in their fields, and their commitment to quality education is central to the University’s teaching, scholarship, and service mission.

Now the second largest of Florida’s state universities, USF serves not only traditional-age, residential students but also adult students already in the workforce and seeking a first degree, professionals seeking to remain or become competitive by continuing their education through graduate study, community college transfer students, and senior citizens. A large number of students attend part-time. This diverse student body requires a broad array of services and programs, delivered at times and in formats that accommodate the needs of all.

USF offers a wide variety of degree programs with both basic and applied orientations, including 87 baccalaureate, 91 master’s, and 28 doctoral degrees, as well as the M.D. These degree programs are in the University's Division of Academic Affairs and are administered in one of 10 schools and colleges: Architecture, Arts and Sciences, Business Administration, Education, Engineering, Fine Arts, Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and an honors college, New College of USF on the Sarasota campus. Specialized credit and non-credit programs are administered by the School of Continuing Education.

As an institution dedicated to excellent teaching, the University's fundamental goal is to evoke in its students a lifelong commitment to learning that enables them to become thoughtful, active, productive, and compassionate citizens. The University is committed to the concept of total student development–intellectual, social, physical, emotional and moral. A major institutional focus is on providing programs and services that reflect standards of quality that foster the development of individual student's talents to the fullest.

This publication discusses the major undergraduate academic programs in the University that serve the people of Florida through the instruction of students, the advancement of knowledge, and community service.

Please send questions or comments to:
Karen M. Hall - webCat@ugs.usf.edu
Effective Date: Semester I, 1999