Flor Institutional Purpose The University of Florida is a public, land- grant research university, one of the most com- prehensive in the United States; it encompasses virtually all academic and professional disci- plines. 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 uni- versity's three-fold mission: education, research, and service. Education undergraduate and graduate through the doctorate is the fundamental pur- pose 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 knowledge for the public good. These three interlocking elements span all of the University of Florida's academic disciplines and multidisciplinary centers and represent the university's obligation to serve the needs of Flori- da's citizens and the nation by pursuing and dis- seminating new knowledge while building upon the past. Every dimension of the university bespeaks its commitment to a culturally and inter- nationally 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 achievements 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 partic- ipate in an elaborate conversation among schol- ars 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 bio- logical universes, 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 the imag- ination lead, we live in a real world whose con- straints limit what we can do. Out of the conflict between our universal intellectual aspirations and the limitations of our environment comes the definition of the university's goals. EDUCATION American colleges and universities share the fundamental educational mission of teaching students. The undergraduate experience, based ida's First University in the arts and sciences, remains at the core of tion of our operating budget. The graduates of higher education in America. The formation of this institution, educated with tax dollars, have educated people, the transformation of mind provided the majority of our private funding. through learning, and the launching of a lifetime Our state legislators created the conditions that of intellectual growth: these goals remain central permit our faculty to educate our students, pur- to every university. The undergraduate founda- sue their research, conduct their clinical practice, tion of American higher education has grown and serve their statewide constituencies. We more complex as the knowledge we teach has exist, then, within the public sector, responsible grown more complex. Where once we had a sin- and responsive to the needs of the citizens of our gle track through the arts and sciences leading to state. The obligations we assume as a public uni- a degree we now have multiple tracks leading to versity determine many of our characteristics. many degrees in arts and sciences as well as in a We have many more undergraduate than range of professional schools. Yet even with the graduate students, we respond quickly to the variety of degrees, American university under- needs of the state's economy, we accommodate graduate education must rest on the fundamen- complex linkages with other state universities tal knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and community colleges, and we operate in In our academic world we recognize two cooperative symbiosis with our state's media. rather imprecisely defined categories of higher We also experience an often too-close interaction education: colleges and universities. The tradi- with the political process. Private universities do tional American college specializes in a carefully not respond in the same ways to these issues and crafted four-year undergraduate program, gener- have a different profile. We, as a public universi- ally focused almost entirely on the arts and sci- ty, must maintain a close, continuous, and effec- ences. Universities extend the range of this tive communication with our many publics. undergraduate education to include advanced or graduate study leading to the Ph.D. Most Ameri- can universities also include a variety of under- graduate and graduate professional programs, master's degree programs, and the like. The Uni- versity of Florida shares these traditions. As an American university, we have a major commit- ment to undergraduate education as the founda- tion of our academic 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, compre- hensive, land-grant, research university. Each of these adjectives defines one of our characteris- tics, and through frequent repetition, this description takes on the style of a ritual incanta- tion: rhythmic, reverent, and infrequently exam- ined. What, then, does each of these key words mean? 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 uni- versities. 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, comprehen- sive), major need not be very precise. What mat- ters is not the precision of the measuring scale but the inclusion of our university in the group. PUBLIC We exist thanks to the commitment and investment of the people of the State of Florida. Generations of tax dollars have constructed the facilities we enjoy and have paid the major por- COMPREHENSIVE This adjective recognizes the universal reach of our pursuit of knowledge. As a matter of prin- ciple, we exclude no field from our purview. We believe that our approach to knowledge and learning, to understanding and wisdom, requires us to be ready to examine any field, cul- tivate any discipline, and explore any topic that offers insight or intellectual tools. Resource lim- its, human or financial, may constrain us from cultivating one or another academic subspecial- ty, but we accept, in principle, no limit on our field of view. Even when we struggle with bud- get problems and must reduce a program or miss an intellectual opportunity, we do so only to meet the practical constraints of our current environment. We never relinquish the commit- ment to the holistic pursuit of knowledge. LAND-GRANT Florida belongs to the set of American uni- versities whose mandate includes a commitment to the development and transmission of practical knowledge. As one of the land-grant universities identified by the Morrill Act of 1862, the Univer- sity of Florida has a special focus on agriculture and engineering and a mandate to deliver the practical benefits of university knowledge to every county in the state. In our university, the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and the College of Engineering respond to this defi- nition most obviously, but over time, the entire university has to come to recognize its commit- ment to translating the benefit of abstract and theoretical knowledge into the marketplace, where it can sustain the economic growth that supports us all. This commitment permeates the institutional culture and defines us as one of some 72 such institutions in America. The land-grant universi- ty is, of course, a peculiarly American invention and captures one of the powerful cultural beliefs