Vision
Mission
Core Values
Student-Centered: We prioritize students in everything we do.
We move beyond transactional moments to build relationships. We show up for students with curiosity, honesty, and care. We aim to represent the very best of what the University can be.
Collaboration: We advance our work through shared purpose and partnership.
We collaborate for students by sharing knowledge and resources, informing colleagues, and partnering to increase our reach and impact. We lead with positive intent and resist defensiveness with one another.
Equity: We act for equity.
We pay close attention to who we are not serving, ensuring equitable access, and remove barriers of our own making. We change our practices and processes in response to student needs—not our own.
Impact: We focus our time, effort, and resources to make a difference.
We align our work with clear goals and university priorities, seek feedback from students and colleagues, and assess our efforts to ensure we are doing the right things to support students.
Growth: We are reflective, adaptive, and innovative.
We make time for learning, reflection, and professional growth. We focus on improving the processes we control and can readily adjust, and we work together to drive institutional change.
Divisional Goals
We measure our success by our ability to create the conditions for every admitted student to persist, graduate, and flourish. UESS provides institution-wide leadership, expertise, and coordination in key student success domains. These goals reflect our responsibility to design, deliver, and coordinate supports that meet the needs of the students we admit—providing structure, connection, and timely support at human scale.
Goal 1: Create a sense of connection and belonging for students.
Ensure students feel known, connected, and supported through relationships that build belonging, engagement, and confidence.
Goal 2: Provide universal and proactive academic support.
Provide academic support for all students by default, with timely, targeted support aligned to student needs, so students do not need to seek help on their own.
Goal 3: Remove structural and systemic barriers to student persistence.
Identify and change institutional policies, practices, and systems that make it harder for students to enroll, stay enrolled, or make academic progress.
Goal 4: Build early and sustained academic momentum toward timely graduation.
Design onboarding, advising, curricular pathways, and transition structures that help students make early progress, anticipate common roadblocks, and stay on track to graduate.
Goal 5: Expand access to high-impact experiences
Increase equitable access to high-impact experiences that deepen learning, support achievement, and strengthen career and post-graduation success.
Goal 6: Use data and evidence to drive continuous improvement.
Use timely, shared data and evidence to identify risk early, guide coordinated decision-making, and continuously improve student success strategies and outcomes across the university.