Mar 28, 2024  
2020-2021 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
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Mission and Core Themes


UNLV Mission Statement
Core Themes and Objectives

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, located in the vibrant and dynamic city of Las Vegas and surrounded by the Mojave Desert, embraces the traditional values of higher education adapted for the global community of the twenty-first century. UNLV assists students in meeting the intellectual and ethical challenges of responsible citizenship and a full and productive life through opportunities to acquire the knowledge and common experiences that enhance critical thinking, leadership skills, aesthetic sensitivity, and social integrity.

The university provides traditional and professional academic programs for a diverse student body and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching, learning, and scholarship. UNLV simultaneously engenders collegial relationships and a sense of community among its members. UNLV embraces the interdependence of quality instruction, scholarly pursuits, and substantive involvements in campus and community life. The university offers artistic, cultural, and technical resources and opportunities to the broadest possible community. It promotes research programs and creative activities by students and faculty that respond to the needs of an urban community in a desert environment. UNLV is committed to developing a synergy between professional and liberal studies, between undergraduate education and graduate programs, and between superior teaching and meaningful research. UNLV increasingly is a dynamic resource for, and partner with, the community that it serves.

In its 60-year history, UNLV has undergone an amazing transformation from a small branch college into a thriving urban research institution of 30,000 students and 3,300 faculty and staff.

Along the way, the urban land-grant university has become a dynamic resource for one of the country’s fastest-growing and most enterprising cities. UNLV’s 332-acre main campus, located on the southern tip of Nevada in a desert valley surrounded by mountains, is home to more than 220 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degree programs, all accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

UNLV’s Top Tier Mission    

UNLV’s diverse faculty, students, staff, and alumni promote community well-being and individual achievement through education, research, scholarship, creative activities, and clinical services. We stimulate economic development and diversification, foster a climate of innovation, promote health, and enrich the cultural vitality of the communities that we serve.

We will evaluate our success as a leading research university by our progress on these key measures:

  • Impact of our research, scholarship, and creative activities.
  • Student achievement of learning outcomes.
  • Student, faculty, and staff diversity, including maintaining UNLV’s Minority Serving Institution (MSI) status and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) status.
  • Intellectual activity, patents, startups, and entrepreneurial activity fostered by UNLV.
  • Impact of our clinical services.
  • A deeper engagement of UNLV with Las Vegas and our region to ensure ongoing alignment with our diverse community’s needs and interests.
  • Carnegie Classification criteria; research expenditures; doctoral degrees granted per year; number of non-faculty research staff and, postdocs.
  • Faculty satisfaction and infrastructure improvements.

As a measure of overall university effectiveness and progress, UNLV will prepare, implement, and disseminate a progress card.

UNLV’s Core Themes

The core themes of UNLV, the objectives, and their indicators of achievement express the mission of the university. The core themes describe in broad statements what UNLV plans to accomplish and reflect the values that are shared by faculty and staff. Evaluation of the metrics associated with the indicators of achievement will demonstrate how effectively UNLV is carrying out its mission.

  • Core Theme 1: Advance Student Achievement
  • Core Theme 2: Promote Research, Scholarship, Creative Activity
  • Core Theme 3: Create an Academic Health Center
  • Core Theme 4: Foster Community Partnerships

More information is available on the UNLV Top Tier website.