Statement of Mission

West Virginia Wesleyan College challenges its students to a life-long commitment to develop their intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and leadership potential and to set and uphold standards of excellence. Firmly rooted in the liberal arts tradition and closely related to The United Methodist Church, the College is a community of learning based on fundamental principles formed at the intersection of Christian faith and liberal education: intellectual rigor, self-discovery, human dignity, mutual support, social justice, self-discipline, mental and physical wellness, the appreciation of diversity and the natural world, and the judicious use of resources. The College recognizes and affirms its interdependence with the external communities-local, regional, national, and global-and its covenant with the people of West Virginia to share its educational and cultural resources.

West Virginia Wesleyan College prepares its students through its curriculum of arts and sciences, preprofessional and professional studies, and its rich campus life program. As a residential, undergraduate institution of higher education, the College aspires to graduate broadly educated men and women who:

• Think critically and creatively,
• Communicate effectively,
• Act responsibly, and
• Demonstrate their local and world citizenship through service.
  

 

Goals of the Wesleyan Experience

1. To assure that all graduates communicate clearly and with some appropriate measure of eloquence and force in both the written and spoken form by providing a sound foundation in basic writing and speaking skills early in their undergraduate experience and reinforcing and expanding on these skills throughout the curriculum.

2. To enable graduates to make discriminating judgments about the relative worth of ideas and arguments by providing a systematic introduction to critical thinking skills that emphasizes the relationship between evidence and sound conclusions.

3. To develop in graduates a critical appreciation for the ideas and values that are the foundation of Western and world culture by introducing them to and causing them to examine critically representative philosophical and religious systems of knowledge and belief.

4. To enable graduates to appreciate contemporary --and indeed future-- culture as part of an ongoing process by providing a historical framework that emphasizes the connectedness of events, people, and world conditions through time.

5. To expand the access of graduates to the richness of human creativity as expressed in letters and the arts by engaging them in an expanded body of works and providing them basic critical tools and aesthetic sensitivity with which to approach the unfamiliar.

6. To instill in graduates an appreciation for humankind's expanded ability to understand, interact with, and shape its physical environment by involving them actively in quantitative and experimental approaches to problem solving and the physical universe in ways that combine theory and application.

7. To provide graduates the experience of sustained and concentrated scholarship by affording them the opportunity for in-depth study of a single academic discipline.

8. To prepare graduates to live effectively as members of society by developing an understanding of the interplay of self and society, the tension that exists between the two, and their mutual dependence.

9. To prepare graduates to be self-reliant and responsible individuals by encouraging them to reflect upon their values, ethical choices, and commitments.

10. To prepare graduates to live effectively in a nation and world characterized by ethnic, racial, philosophic, cultural, linguistic, religious, and geographic diversity by helping them to understand traditions and views differing from their own, to practice and unbiased habit of mind, and to treat others with fairness and civility.

11. To prepare graduates to work collaboratively with others by engaging them in cooperative learning in the curriculum and co-curriculum.

12. To prepare graduates to be competent and comfortable in the use of information technology through a laptop computing program and by employing information technology throughout the curriculum.

13. To enhance the desire and the ability of graduates to achieve and maintain physical and mental health by involving them in explorations or activities that demonstrate the unity between physical and mental well-being.

14. To instill in graduates the sense that learning never ends by demonstrating that seeking knowledge and understanding is one of life's central purposes.