Mission and Scope of the SIU System
[This statement appears in 1 Policies of the Board of Trustees, A.1.]
Southern Illinois University, including Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, is the only senior system of higher education serving the people of the southern half of the state of Illinois. It is a comprehensive university, with medical, dental, and law schools, and with degree programs from the associate to the professional and doctoral levels. As it has grown and flourished, SIUC and SIUE have developed comprehensive programs of instruction, research, and public service which have attracted students, faculty, and staff not only from the region but from throughout the state and nation, and from overseas as well. In properly and rigorously meeting its regional responsibilities, it has brought and will continue to bring educational distinction to southern Illinois and to the state as a whole.
The university's diversity and comprehensiveness are manifest in SIUC and SIUE. Both offer the standard range of undergraduate programs, and both work cooperatively with the public schools and community colleges in their respective areas. Southern Illinois University Carbondale, as the older of the two, has developed broad and carefully monitored graduate and research programs of high quality; and its public service and continuing education components have been guided by its location in a region of small communities, farms, and mines. Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville has strong master's level, specialist, and research programs, and its location in the second largest population center in the state governs the urban-oriented nature of its public service and continuing education programs, as well as its commitment to disadvantaged persons.
In these challenging times, Southern Illinois University is pledged
- to maintain the high quality of its programs of instruction, research, and public service;
- to monitor judiciously the development of and addition to these programs; and
- to sustain, through these programs, its diverse and comprehensive educational contribution to the people of southern Illinois, the state, and the nation.