Vision/Aspiration:

Together we design educational opportunities that are unmatched in preparing learners for the future they face and the communities they shape.

Vision/Aspiration:

GVSU will prepare globally minded citizens for the future they face and the communities they shape. Our community of educators will create and employ innovative approaches to liberal education and professional programs that center on and prepare students for a lifetime of continual learning and growth.

Mission:

At GVSU, learners are empowered in their pursuits, professions, and purpose. As a community, we advance equity, understanding, and a lifetime of learning.

Mission:

At GVSU, we empower learners in their pursuits, professions, and purpose. The University enriches society through excellent teaching, active scholarship, advancement of equity, and public service.

Personalized Educational Experience

Our Commitment to you, the learner:  At Grand Valley, we help you develop your pathway and guide and support you in your choices. Your passion and curiosity spark our work, and we will learn from one another along the way. We’ll help you personalize your approach to determining your educational purpose, should you want or need that. Then, we’ll help you fulfil your dreams. It’s your path, your purpose, and your mission.

Our focus: We will serve as your guides, commit our expertise, and enrich your network through an active community valuing the development and exchange of knowledge, ideas, and expressions.

Strategy: Together we develop an educational pathway reflective of you and your unique experiences and passions. We accomplish this through cutting edge programs, experiential learning, a foundation of liberal education, a relationship-rich community, and your personal network of mentors and advisors. Undergraduate students may need or expect additional high-touch advice, guidance, and opportunities to choose their pathway. Graduate students can rely on committed faculty to guide their research, projects, and realizing what’s next in their goals.

Empowered Educational Experience

At Grand Valley, we will center students in everything we do. Education is an intrinsic value for the learners themselves as well as the public good for the wider communities of which we’re a part. We will consider each and every member of our educational community a learner, each one of us at different stages in our educational pathway. We are committing to helping students discover their passion and guiding and supporting them along the way.

Leading that effort will be our expert faculty members, who develop the curricula that our students need for mastery of their chosen academic directions.

Strategy: Student agency and success will always drive our collective work. We will demonstrate this by prioritizing:

• Continual movement toward an understanding of individual student needs, motivations, and goals that is actively supported by faculty and staff
• Expanded flexibility for students to learn when, how, and where they learn best; this will be coupled with appropriate support for faculty and staff to be able to adapt to those changes while continuing to provide quality educational opportunities
• Relevant programs full of learning opportunities that can be applied to the pressing concerns and problems of communities and the world
• Deeper and broader experiential learning for all students that includes internships, practica, cooperative placements, global learning, undergraduate research, community-based learning, and more
• Strong integration of liberal education with professional education; this fusion will particularly reflect students’ digital literacy, technological proficiency, and leadership development
• Collaborative research, scholarship, and creative expression between students and faculty members that brings them together in partnership and models lifelong learning and pursuit of new knowledge
• Personalized assistance to students to identify and develop a network of mentors and advisors from among the faculty, staff, employment supervisors, fellow students, alumni, and community members that form the extended GVSU learning community
• Community engagement practices that demonstrate reciprocity of learning
• Progressive expansion of high-demand programs that are rigorously designed and reflect the integration of liberal education and professional education

Lifelong Learning

Our commitment to you, the learner:  We integrate learning and experiences across your lifetime.

Our focus: From our first encounter with learners, we will strive to provide innovative curricular, co-curricular, and experiential learning opportunities. We will partner with you for the rest of your life on the growth of enhancement of your own knowledge and skills—the knowledge and skills you will employ in improving your communities.

Strategy: At GVSU, our approach to teaching and learning integrates liberal and professional education in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary ways, and is directly relevant to the worlds you will shape. Our faculty will model the passionate pursuit of lifetime learning through cutting-edge research, scholarship, and expression. We will pursue reciprocal relationships with alumni and community partners to create sustainable and supportive learning networks. Concurrently, our programs and educators will encourage students to generate ideas on how they can be entrepreneurial in their learning, especially in ways that enhance their communities and workplaces. 

Lifelong Learning

From our first encounter with learners, we will strive to provide innovative curricular, co- curricular, and experiential learning opportunities. At GVSU, our approach to teaching and learning will continue to integrate liberal and professional education in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary ways, and will be directly relevant to the communities and world our graduates will shape. The liberal education approach of the undergraduate curriculum will provide a foundation for how to learn, and how to apply that learning, in leadership roles and amidst diverse communities.

With our support and guidance, lifetime learners will shape those communities while they are students as well as across the rest of their lifetimes. Our faculty will model the passionate pursuit of lifetime learning through cutting-edge research, scholarship, and expression. We will pursue reciprocal relationships with alumni and community partners to create sustainable and supportive learning networks. Concurrently, our programs and educators will encourage students to generate ideas on how they can be enterprising in their learning, especially in ways that enhance their communities and workplaces.

Strategy: Design and leverage learning opportunities for students of all stages in their lives and careers, meeting their needs where they are. We will succeed at this through:

• Championing a strong foundation of liberal education that engenders the mindset and skills to advance students’ education across a lifetime; the liberal education will always be integrated with experiential, practical, and professional educational opportunities that propel all in our learning communities to positive effect in society and the larger world
• Developing beneficial and supportive connections between and across all those in the larger GVSU learning community, including future and currently enrolled students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members
• Increasing flexibility for students in terms of pace and engagement with curricular components; this may include additional terms across the calendar year, more summertime, online, low-residency, and on-demand selections
• Attracting our traditional-aged FTIAC student population and supporting them in learning across their lifetimes while also providing more and attractive options for adult learners
• Building strategic institutional partnerships to scale our impact, expand our reach, and better serve diverse groups of learners (e.g., community colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges & Universities, etc.)

Educational Equity

Our Commitment to you, the learner: We create transformative equity and a sense of belonging.

Our focus: We embrace our role as a leader in impatiently advancing equity for all learners.

Strategy: Together, we ensure that our community serves as a catalyst towards a more just and sustainable world -- both on our campuses and beyond. We work to eliminate disparities and obstacles for student success, especially those that have historically been along lines of race, gender, class, and social structures.

Educational Equity

We will embrace our role as a leader in urgently advancing equity for all learners. Together, we will ensure that our community serves as a catalyst toward a more just and sustainable world -- both on our campuses and beyond. We will work to eliminate disparities and obstacles for student success, especially those that have historically been along lines color, race, socioeconomic status, sex/gender, including gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation.

Strategy: Center equity and inclusion for a more diverse learning community. We will achieve this through:

• Removing systemic barriers to educational access, retention, and persistence
• Developing and establishing university policies, practices, systems, and culture that will demonstrate our institutional accountability to diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and total well-being for all community members
• Recruiting, empowering, and retaining a diverse student body, faculty, and staff
• Appropriately acknowledging that GVSU exists on the land of the Anishinaabe peoples—the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodéwadmi —and commits to increasing the visibility of Anishinaabe people among its students, faculty and staff, its curriculum, and its cultural programming
• Incorporating environmental, human and economic factors toward global and societal vitality that advance beyond our current award-winning sustainable practices