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News

New UH mission statement on tap

Craig: Updated version much less verbose, 
focuses more on the University's future

by Stephanie Harmon
The Daily Cougar

UH will soon have a new mission statement, marking the first mission statement change since 2001.

The UH Faculty Senate Scholarship & Community Committee proposed the new mission statement on Sept. 27, and the UH Faculty Senate Executive Committee approved it Oct. 4.

"This time, we did sort of a dramatic overhaul of it. We decided to make it shorter," said David Bell, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs for the UH System.

While the current mission statement consists of 409 words, excluding the preamble, the proposed statement, in draft form, consists of 91 words. 

The new mission statement reads as follows: 

"The Mission of the University of Houston is to create and disseminate knowledge through the education of a diverse population of traditional and non-traditional students, and through research, artistic and scholarly endeavors, as it becomes the nation's premiere public urban university.

"In this role, the University of Houston applies its expertise to the challenges facing the local, state, national and global communities, and it establishes and nurtures relationships with community organizations, government agencies, public schools and the private sector to enhance the educational, economic and cultural vitality of Houston and Texas."

Faculty Senate President Steven Craig, who assigned the standing committee within the Faculty Senate that rewrote the current mission statement, attributes the mission statement's changes to three factors.

"A mission statement should be concise; UH's (is) verbose," he said. "A mission statement should be about the goals, and much of the verbosity in the UH mission statement is about process. The mission statement should be about the future, and ours (sounds) like it (is) about the past."

The current approval process for university mission statements dates back to 1988.The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board must approve the mission statement of each Texas university every four to five years.

UH faculty and administration first review the proposed mission statement internally before sending it to the UH Board of Regents.

After approval by the Board of Regents, the THECB receives the mission statement for final review and approval.

Bell said he anticipates the new mission statement will be adopted sometime in early 2007, as the boards involved with the approval process meet only quarterly.

To read the current UH mission statement online, visit www.uh.edu/admin/mission.html. 

Any suggestions for the proposed mission statement can be e-mailed to Craig at scraig@uh.edu.

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