Criterion One: Mission and Integrity The organization operates with integrity to ensure the fulfillment of its mission through structures and processes that involve the board, administration, faculty, staff, and students. Opportunities for improvement

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	UMKC’s history creates unique challenges in communicating and fulfilling our multi-faceted missions. Perhaps the greatest challenge rests in bringing into clearer focus the relationship that exists between the specific missions of our academic units (several of our schools have histories that preceded the creation of UMKC, indeed, some preceding UMKC’s predecessor, the University of Kansas City), and our identity as the major public university that must serve the diverse needs of our metropolitan area and our role as one of four campuses in the UM System committed to its mission to “stimulate . . . lifelong learning by Missouri residents, and advance the health and well-being and intellectual, cultural, and economic interests of the people of Missouri, the nation, and the world.”
In communicating UMKC’s mission, the above overriding mission is sometimes obscured by the more widely disseminated and more specific mission of UMKC to lead in the health sciences, deepen and expand the visual and performing arts, and collaborate in urban issues. At times, people who oversee academic programs and other University projects that are not specifically named in UMKC’s mission statement may be apprehensive and feel that their initiatives are deemed less significant to the University’s assessment of its success in fulfilling our mission. Over the past year, as part of the strategic planning process, the Chancellor and Provost have made it a priority to address this issue. They have stressed the interdependence of the UM System’s mission, our UMKC vision statement, and the Board of Curators’ more specific mission for UMKC. The Chancellor and Provost have explained clearly that this specific mission is intended to augment and expand on the UM System Mission and UMKC’s Vision Statement and to distinguish our unique role within the UM System. This message will need to be continually underscored. Looking forward, the issue might also point to a need to consider revising the UMKC mission statement to include the wider perspective of our vision statement, thus bringing into clearer focus the message contained in our various mission documents. We recognize that fulfilling our mission will have to be about more than simply revising or solidifying mission documents. We will need to make greater progress in several key areas. First, we need to move toward a more focused central identity as a more unified University, rather than as a confederacy of distinct academic units, institutes, centers and programs. Creating a more visible identity for UMKC will promote a more centered and focused mission. Our history as distinct, separate schools coming together to form UMKC also creates a challenge to coalesce around a centered and focused mission. In some cases, individual academic units and departments, such as the Conservatory of Music and Dance, Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration, or the College of Arts and Science’s Department of Theatre, have a more visible public identity than the University as a whole. On campus, one often hears the statement “UMKC is the area’s best kept secret.” That statement represents an ongoing frustration that, despite the excellent reputation of many of our programs, UMKC’s image as a full-service university remains ill-defined. One need that is being addressed in current strategic planning is giving greater attention to the growth of our undergraduate programs. The ongoing growth and academic success of the College is going to be crucial in serving as the foundation of UMKC’s identity as a university with a strong, vibrant, campus-life for undergraduate students. We have not been as successful as we need to be in communicating our mission within our University and even less successful in communicating with the community, for example, our surrounding neighborhoods. Too often, we have appeared to be reactive to crises, rather than proactive in communicating with our various constituencies. A second opportunity for improvement resides in the successful implementation of the Strategic Plan that will be unveiled in the Fall 2009. Our strategic planning process proved an excellent opportunity to educate the campus and wider community about our mission documents and their importance in guiding our goals, strategies and specific action plans. One example of this is the recognition by the Strategic Planning Committee that being named as the University of Missouri’s Campus for the Visual and Performing Arts should not be limited to enhancing specific academic programs in the traditional arts. It also should lead us to finding ways to make arts experiences central to all of our students, faculty and staff. One example could be providing live performances, art exhibits, etc. for students, faculty and staff on our Hospital Hill campus. Finally, as a result of the HLC self study process, we have come to recognize the need to increase the sense of ownership in regard to our mission. Discussions with faculty, staff and students uncovered an all too pervasive sense that fulfilling the various missions of our University was primarily the job of the upper administration. We will need to find ways to provide students, faculty, staff and community members the opportunities to make our mission real at the grassroots levels. For example, beyond the recent creation of the Division of Diversity, Equity and Access, we are currently studying the best way to create a body of students, faculty, staff and community members who can propose and evaluate future initiatives in diversity.