Mission Statement:

Missouri State University is a public, comprehensive university system with a mission in public affairs, whose purpose is to develop educated persons. The University is committed to five major goals:

Democratizing society.
Incubating new ideas.
Imagining Missouri's future.
Making Missouri's future.
Modeling ethical and effective behavior as a public institution.

The University's statewide mission in public affairs, which requires a campus-wide commitment to foster competence and responsibility in the common vocation of citizenship, distinguishes its identity.

The undergraduate academic experience is grounded in a general education curriculum that draws heavily from the liberal arts and sciences. This foundation provides the basis for mastery of focused disciplinary and professional studies, as well as enabling critical, independent and intellectual judgment about the culture, values and institutions of the larger society.

The task of developing educated persons obligates the University to expand its store of human understanding through research, scholarship and creative endeavor, and drawing from that store of understanding, to provide service to the communities that support it. In all of its programs, the University uses the most effective methods of discovering and imparting knowledge and the appropriate use of technology in support of these activities.

The University functions through a multicampus system that is integrated to address the needs of its constituents.