Evergreen's Mission

Making Learning Happen

As the nation's leading public interdisciplinary liberal arts college, Evergreen's mission is to sustain a vibrant academic community and to offer students an education that will help them excel in their intellectual, creative, professional and community service goals.

This mission is based on a set of principles, described below, that guide the development of all college programs and services.

Principles that guide Evergreen's educational programs:

• Teaching is the central work of the faculty at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Supporting student learning engages everyone at Evergreen-faculty and staff.
• Academic program offerings are interdisciplinary and collaborative, a structure that accurately reflects how people learn and work in their occupations and personal lives.
• Students are taught to be aware of what they know, how they learn, and how to apply what they know; this allows them to be responsible for their own education, both at college and throughout their lives.
• College offerings involve active participation in learning, rather than passive reception of information, and integrate theory with practical applications.
• Evergreen supports community-based learning, with research and applications focused on issues and problems found within students' communities. This principle, as well as the desire to serve diverse placebound populations, guides Evergreen's community-based programs in Tacoma and on Tribal Reservations.
• Because learning is enhanced when topics are examined from the perspectives of diverse groups and because such differences reflect the world around us, the college strives to create a rich mix in the composition of its student body, staff, and faculty, and to give serious consideration to issues of social class, age, race, ethnicity, (dis)ability, gender, religious preference, and sexual orientation.
• Faculty and staff continually review, assess and modify programs and services to fit changing needs of students and society.
• The college serves the needs of a diverse range of students including recently graduated high school students, transfer students, working adults, and students from groups that historically have not attended college.

As evidenced by these principles, an important part of Evergreen's educational mission is engagement with the community, the state, and the nation. One focus of this engagement is through the work of public service centers that both disseminate the best work of the college and bring back to the college the best ideas of the wider community.

As Revised on 1/12/2000.
Originally adopted 3/16/89 & Revised 9/25/91 & 4/9/97