THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA


INSTITUTIONAL PURPOSE

 The University of Florida is a public, land-grant re-
search university, one of the most comprehensive in the
United States; it encompasses virtually all academic and
professional disciplines. It is the oldest and largest of
Florida's nine universities and a member of the American
Association of Universities. Its faculty and staff are
dedicated to the common pursuit of the University's
threefold mission: education, research, and service.
 Education-undergraduate and graduate through the
doctorate is the fundamental purpose of the University.
Research and scholarship are integral to the education
process and to expanding humankind's understanding of
the natural world, the mind, and the senses. Service is the
University's obligation to share the benefits of its knowl-
edge for the public good.
 These three interlocking elements span all of the Uni-
versity of Florida's academic disciplines and
multidisciplinary centers and represent the University's
obligation to serve the needs of Florida's citizens and the
nation by pursuing and disseminating new knowledge
while building upon the past. Every dimension of the
University bespeaks its commitment to a culturally and
internationally diverse intellectual environment in which
teaching, research, and service are fully integrated with its
interdisciplinary pursuits to meet the changing needs of
the global community.
 The University of Florida is committed to providing the
 knowledge, benefits, and services it produces with quality
 and effectiveness. It aspires to further national and
 international recognition for its initiatives and achieve-
 ments in promoting human values and improving the
 quality of life.




 THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA:MISSION
 AND GOALS

 The University of Florida belongs to an ancient tradition
 of great universities. We participate in an elaborate
 conversation among scholars and students that extends
 over space and time linking the experiences of Western
 Europe with the traditions and histories of all cultures, that
 explores the limits of the physical and biological uni-
 verses, and that nurtures and prepares generations of
 educated people to address the problems of our societies.
 While the University of Florida recognizes no limits on its
 intellectual boundaries, and our faculty and students
 remain free to explore wherever the mind and imagina-
 tion lead, we live in a real world whose constraints limit
 whatwecando. Outof the conflict between our universal
 intellectual aspirations and the limitations of our environ-
 ment comes the definition of the University's goals.


EDUCATION

 American colleges and universities share the funda-
mental educational mission of teaching students. The
undergraduate experience, based in the arts and sciences,
remains at the core of higher education in America. The
formation of educated people, the transformation of mind
through learning, and the launching of a lifetime of
intellectual growth: these goals remain central to every
university. The undergraduate foundation of American
higher education has grown more complex as the knowl-
edge we teach has grown more complex. Where once we
had a single track through the arts and sciences leading to
a degree we now have multiple tracks leading to many
degrees in arts and sciences a well as in a range of
professional schools. Yet even with the variety of degrees,
American university undergraduate education must rest
on the fundamental knowledge of the liberal arts and
sciences.
 In our academic world we recognize two rather impre-
cisely defined categories of higher education: colleges
and universities. The traditional American college spe-
cializes in a carefully crafted four-year undergraduate
program, generally focused almost entirely on the arts and
sciences. Universities extend the range of this under-
graduate education to include advanced or graduate
study leading to the Ph.D. Most American universities
also include a variety of undergraduate and graduate
professional programs, master's degree programs, and the
like. The University of Florida shares these traditions. As
an American university, we have a major commitment to
undergraduate education as the foundation of our aca-
demic organization and we pursue graduate education for
the Ph.D. as well as many other graduate degrees in
professional fields.
 We are, in addition, a major public, comprehensive,
 land-grant, research university. Each of these adjectives
 defines one of our characteristics, and through frequent
 repetition, this description takes on the style of a ritual
 incantation: rhythmic, reverent, and infrequently exam-
 ined. What, then, does each of these key words means?



 MAJOR

 Here, at the head of the list, we find one of our most
 important aspirations. We will be, we must be, and we are
 a major university. We define ourselves in comparison
 with the best universities we can find. We need not be the
 absolutely unambiguously best, but we must be among
 the best universities in the world. Exact ranking of the best
 universities is a meaningless exercise, but most of us can
 name 60 great universities. By whatever indicator of
 quality we choose, our university should fall into this
 group. If we define a group of universities who share our
 adjectives (major, public, comprehensive, major need not