Gustavus Mission and Core Values
Gustavus Adolphus College is a church-related, residential liberal arts college firmly rooted in its Swedish and Lutheran heritage.
The College offers students of high aspiration and promise a liberal arts education of recognized excellence provided by faculty who embody the highest standards of teaching and scholarship. The Gustavus curriculum is designed to bring students to mastery of a particular area of study within a general framework that is both interdisciplinary and international in perspective.
The College strives to balance educational tradition with innovation and to foster the development of values as an integral part of intellectual growth. It seeks to promote the open exchange of ideas and the independent pursuit of learning.
The College aspires to be a community of persons from diverse backgrounds who respect and affirm the dignity of all people. It is a community where a mature understanding of the Christian faith and lives of service are nurtured and students are encouraged to work toward a just and peaceful world.
The purpose of a Gustavus education is to help its students attain their full potential as persons, to develop in them a capacity and passion for lifelong learning, and to prepare them for fulfilling lives of leadership and service in society.
GUSTAVUS CORE VALUES
Implicit in this statement of institutional purpose and goals are certain institutional values that guide the Gustavus community. These values are rooted in our distinctive heritage and help to define our community. They also help us to focus on appropriate objectives for our college, guide the selection of priorities among those objectives, and help to shape the strategies we will pursue in the face of various challenges and opportunities.
Excellence
First among the College’s shared values is a commitment to high quality and excellence in all that we do. Commitment to excellence calls on all of us to achieve to the very best of our capabilities and exceed our own expectations. Our distinctive heritage demands nothing less than excellence.
Community
Gustavus has always prized community. Civility, mutual respect, cooperation, shared governance, and a pervasive sense of concern for every member of the Gustavus community are hallmarks of the College. Freedom to express a broad range of ideas is central to our sense of community.
Justice
Our Swedish and Lutheran heritage lead us to hold up justice as a primary institutional value. We strive to be a just community in all of our actions and to educate our students for morally responsible lives. “Education for the common good” is our objective, and integrity must be one of our defining characteristics.
Service
The College highly values service as an objective of life and education. We embrace the notion that authentic leadership expresses itself in service – the classical ideal of a truly liberating education. Education frees us to serve God and humanity to the best of our abilities.
Faith
Conviction that religious faith enriches and completes learning is the foundation of community, ethics, and service. We are compelled to excel in a divinely ordered world. Without expecting conformity, we encourage an honest exploration of religious faith and seek to foster a mature understanding of the Christian faith.
While there are undoubtedly additional values that distinguish Gustavus from other institutions and that guide and define us, these five values are certainly pervasive within and foundational for the College community.
About the Center for Servant Leadership
Gustavus has long prepared its students to live out lives of service and leadership in their communities. Recognizing this tradition of excellence, the College merged four separate programs (the Center for Vocational Reflection, the Community Service Center, the Office of Church Relations, and the Career Center) to create the Center for Servant Leadership (CSL) in 2011.
Collectively, the CSL uses its many programs and resources to equip members of the Gustavus community to learn, live, and lead “from within” in ways that serve others and help to address the world’s deep needs. By working with many other programs and offices across campus—including academic departments, the Chaplains’ Office, International Education, the Diversity Center, and student organizations—CSL makes the most out of coordinating existing opportunities and developing new ways to help students find their greater calling in life. Examples of CSL programming include course offerings, retreats, workshops, conferences, discussion groups, resource center, and areas for small-group conversation. The CSL also acts as a springboard for ideas as the College works to strengthen leadership development.