Message from the Provost
In his book College: The Undergraduate Experience in America, Ernest Boyer asserts that higher education has become merely a private good – a credential to land a better job or begin a successful, lucrative career – rather than a public good – contributing to the flourishing of local, regional, national, or global communities. But, contrary to this consumer-driven, utilitarian mentality, Azusa Pacific University (APU) is firmly committed to graduating men and women who seek to positively change the world in the name of Christ.
At APU, that philosophy informs every program and policy, including the Academic Vision 2016. This document recognizes that preparing a generation of students to positively engage the world's most pressing social issues with personal character and professional competence, begins with the foundation of four essential elements in their higher education.
Transformational Scholarship
Education at its best does more than inform – it transforms. APU students apply research and scholarship to global-social issues that ultimately bring about change in both the student and the world at large. This genre of life-altering scholarship springs from intense interdisciplinary exchange, intentional integration of faith and learning, alternative degree structures responsive to diverse and changing student needs, and an infrastructure supportive of student and faculty research, application, and lifelong learning. Read more.
Faith Integration
Essential to transformational scholarship, faith integration cultivates a culture of theologically informed reflection on academic disciplines, professional programs, and the development of moral leaders who will impact their world. APU fosters this environment through faculty development activities; seminar, workshop, and colloquia funding; mentorship programs; evaluation measures, and research into the institutionalization of a degree program in faith integration. Read more.
God-honoring Diversity
Embracing the diversity of God's creation, Azusa Pacific strives to thrive as a place of diverse people, ideas, thoughts, experiences, and gifts. This includes adopting the broader community and engaging in a dialogue of difficult issues, marked by respect, openness, civility, active listening, and support for academic freedom. Through recruiting practices, curricular content, funded faculty and student activities, and vast multicultural experiences, APU promotes a Kingdom-reflective campus. Read more.
Intentional Internationalization
APU deliberately integrates an intercultural and international dimension into teaching, research, scholarship, and service through the exploration of events, institutions, peoples, problems, and issues beyond our nation's borders. Each discipline employs a variety of instructional and experiential methods to develop culturally competent faculty and students. Read more.
With a commitment to these four pivotal components, APU seeks to foster a rich environment in which academic rigor, expertise, synthesis, evaluation, imagination, freedom, and creativity coalesce to produce students of exceptional scholarship and character.
Michael M. Whyte, Ph.D.
Provost
