Statement of Educational Purposes

Since its inception in 1865, Ottawa University has sought to live out its mission in direct ways. It began with the collaboration between two American Baptist missionaries, Jotham and Eleanor Meeker, and the Ottawa Indians of Kansas to promote education and peace in a changing world. Out of this relationship, Ottawa University was born. Ever mindful of its original commitments, Ottawa University is now a comprehensive, not-for-profit, educational institution, which serves students of traditional age and adult learners worldwide. Grounded by its mission, Ottawa University carries out its educational purposes through its liberal arts and professional studies programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Ottawa University guides learners to integrate faith, learning, and life, to gain the abilities they need to succeed and prosper, and to do so with an increased sense of the knowledge, compassion, respect, and service our world requires.

Ottawa University intends that

• a general education program of liberal arts studies enables its faculty and students to investigate the World broadly and freely in order that its students develop and express their life philosophies and Values with awareness of and concern for others;
• study in undergraduate, graduate and other professional development programs enable students to gain the specific expertise they need to enter professions they can contribute to; and
• programs, teaching and learning continuously improve through assessment and sensitive responses to community needs.

Ottawa University’s educational purposes require it to provide at all its locations

• diverse faculty who support the mission, purposes and general welfare of the University;
• caring faculty who are dedicated to teaching undergraduates in both discipline and liberal arts courses and who are sensitive to a heterogeneous body of students as persons seeking to grow spiritually, morally, and civically as well as intellectually;
• faculty who bring the same sensitivities and dedication to educating graduate and post-graduate students;
• multiple approaches to teaching which assure comprehensive and varied responses to students’ learning patterns;
• appropriate academic support, environment and technology to enhance teaching, learning, research, and communication;
• sensitivity to different ethnicities and political configurations of the global community;
• and commitment to social responsibility which asserts that the University’s education is of the heart and hand as well as the intellect.