Renewing our role and mission
Since gaining admission into the state system of higher education in 1964, Wichita State has had a distinct role as Kansas' only major research university in a metropolitan area.
We are blessed to be located in the largest city in Kansas, and able to draw on the resources and expertise of the professionals, corporations and institutions that surround us here. We are able to provide learning to our students in a special way because of our proximity to these resources.
At the same time, the university contributes greatly by:
• Providing the well-prepared graduates this area needs to thrive
• Serving as the dominant higher education source of learning, research and community
service
• Adding arts and athletics to enhance local quality of life.
We want to be judged in the context of the type of university we are, in the area we serve.
It means that students who graduate from high school in this area can get a first-class education without leaving the area, and those from other places can come and benefit by what the citizens of Wichita and Kansas have built here.
Long-serving WSU History Prof. John Dreifort has summed all this up in a single word – opportunity.
It is the opportunity the community offers Wichita State through a mill levy and other voluntary support and the opportunity WSU offers students and community.
All of this can be envisioned as a set of pillars, like those that once supported the campus Carnegie Library, and now flank a campus entrance off 17th Street, near The Ulrich Museum.
Those pillars represent our mission as a research university. That mission, today, is embodied in the work of our colleges of Business, Education, Engineering, Fine Arts, Health Professions and Liberal Arts and Sciences and fostered by an environment conducive to learning.
In order to prosper, our region badly needs what each of these colleges provides. And though economic development and quality of life are clear benefits from a research university, we should also talk about what the university means to graduates and to today’s students.
At Wichita State, we help students discover who they want to be, and then help them to become that person.
It’s a promise Wichita State has made – and kept – tens of thousands of times.
In partnership with our students, faculty, staff and alumni, and with the support of our community, the Board of Regents, the Legislature and the Governor, it’s a promise we will continue to make and keep.