Mission
We prepare students in our Christian academic community to excel as thoughtful, resourceful, and responsible citizens with a passion for serving God, the Church, and the world.
We accomplish this through excellent teaching, high expectations, worthwhile example, and fidelity to our Presbyterian heritage. Our mission is the same for all campuses and sites; for online learning; and for all programs, curricular and extracurricular, graduate and undergraduate.
Vision
We aim to be the preeminent small to medium-sized Christian university in the Upper South, with a reputation earned there and beyond as a school serious about its Christian commitment, focused on student success, dedicated to academic excellence, and successful in producing graduates who excel wherever they live, work, and serve.
Who We Are and What We Do
King is committed to having its mission statement guide all that we do in our daily operations and decisions. In the spring 2018 semester, we held a special convocation to discuss what the mission statement means and how it is fulfilled on a day-to-day basis. We also published a booklet titled “Who We Are and What We Do” that parses the words of the mission statement and provides examples of how it is lived out in practical terms.
We invite you to view this booklet to learn more about King’s characteristics and values.
Strategic Goals and Objectives
- Academic Program: To provide rigorous academic programs that encompass the historical foundation of our distinctive Christian liberal arts and sciences tradition with knowledge and application relevant for serving today’s communities and student needs.
- Strengthen the institution’s practice for evaluating existing academic programs for relevancy, rigor, and program needs in all platforms.
- Develop new academic programs and instructional sites based on research and analysis in order to fulfill the mission as well as meet student and community needs.
- Foster experiential learning components in King’s academic programs to transform students’ thinking and practices.
- Expand the integration of faith and learning in every discipline, major, and program delivery model
- Facilities: To provide students, faculty, and staff with facilities that enhance academic, residential, and co-curricular experiences.
- Enhance and operationalize the facilities master plan, which prioritizes learning, living, and working spaces most needed for improvements or renovations, with an emphasis on improving and increasing on-campus community spaces that encourage student, faculty, and staff interaction and collegiality.
- Financial Stability: To develop repeatable revenue annually so the University consistently yields excess revenue over expenses. Revenue streams should include cash flow positive programs, unrestricted support, and major gifts for capital improvements and endowments.
- Perform a cost-benefit analysis of programs and services to develop an action plan for expenditure adjustments and resource allocations.
- Identify opportunities for developing additional unrestricted support.
- Identify opportunities to increase repeatable revenue streams.
- Leadership: To foster a culture of ethical and effective Christian leadership at all levels of the University.
- Provide professional development programs to make the best use of internal constituents’ talents and abilities.
- Recruit and retain a diverse workforce to meet the needs of the University.
- Implement a leadership plan to aid the Board of Trustees in cultivating outstanding future board members
- Implement a student leadership development program to prepare students to be effective, ethical, and innovative leaders wherever they live, work, and serve.
- Marketing/Reputation: To promote the identity of the University based on our commitment to diverse academic programs taught in a rich liberal arts tradition rooted in Christianity.
- Promote the advantages of King University’s historically Christian education, culture, strengths, and ideals to all King constituents.
- Affirm King’s commitment to lifelong service by cultivating and sustaining relationships within our sphere of influence.
- Assess and improve King University’s integrated media marketing/communications channels, both internal and external, to ensure their relevancy and effectiveness.
- Develop a rolling master plan/schedule of external relations events that identify each event’s strategic purpose and importance to the institution and its stakeholders.
- Student Success: To recruit, warmly welcome, enroll, and retain students who demonstrate the appropriate level of ability and potential and connect them with academic and nonacademic resources for achieving success within the University.
- Optimize enrollment growth for all educational delivery platforms.
- Increase student retention and graduation rates.
- Technological Infrastructure: To strengthen technological infrastructures across the University.
- Assess and improve technology services on a continual basis to ensure accessibility and reliability.
- Increase technological efficiencies and provide consistently high levels of customer service at all campuses and sites and online.
- Continually develop systems and procedures that protect personal and institutional data and provide for disaster recovery.
- University Culture: Faculty and Staff: To promote a culture which values faculty and staff, and is committed to clear and consistent internal communication, organizational improvement, and integration of Christian faith into the University community.
- Identify and implement ways to increase transparency in decision-making processes, to build trust among trustees, administration, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and local community members.
- Foster open and effective communication among faculty, staff, and administration.
- Implement best practices to improve processes and policies, and actively seek data from comparable institutions during ongoing improvement efforts.
- Seek, select, train, and retain excellent employees devoted to student needs, according to best practices in human resource management.
- University Culture: Students: To promote a student culture which values integration of Christian faith and learning and leads to greater engagement in the University community.
- Identify and enhance ways for students, across all sites and delivery platforms, to find quickly a personal connection to the greater King community of faculty, staff, and fellow students.
- Increase student involvement in the campus community by promoting and supporting co-curricular and community service activities.