EMS and Kenyon College's Mission and Goals
An Environmental Management Systems (EMS) is beneficial to Kenyon College because it supports the following core components of the college's Mission including:
- "...a distinctive identity and...a special purpose among institutions of higher learning."
- "...an academic institution."
- "Kenyon's academic purpose will permeate all that the College does, but the definition of the academic will be open to recurrent questioning."
- "We have altered our cirriculum deliberately in answer to the changes in the world, as an organism responds to its environment without losing its identity."
- "...afford its students a higher sense of their own humanity and to inspire them to work with others to make a society that would nourish a better humankind."
- "...deep committment to diversity."
- "As a private and independent college, Kenyon has been free to provide its own mode of education and special quality of life for its members."
- "As an undergraduate institution, Kenyon focuses upon those studies that are essential to the intellectual and moral development of its students."
- "The college continues to think of its students as partners in inquiry, and seeks those who are earnestly committed to learning."
- "It emphasizes that students learn and develop, intellectually and socially, from their fellows and from their own responses to corporate living."
- "To enable its graduates to deal effectively with problems as yet uncalculated, Kenyon seeks to develop capacities, skills, and talents which time has shown to be most valuable:to be able to speak and write clearly so as to advance thoughts and arguments cogently; to be able to discriminate between the essential and the trivial; to arrive at well-informed value judgments; to be able to work independently and with others; to be able to comprehend our culture as well as other cultures. Kenyon has prized those processes of education which shape students by engaging them simultaneously with the claims of different philosophies, of contrasting modes, of many liberal arts."
An EMS can also assist Kenyon to implement these college Goals and Objectives:
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I. General Liberal Arts Education
"Kenyon is institutionally committed to promoting a liberal arts education. Skills are promoted and developed that are not only useful to any career but essential for a fulfilling and valuable life.a) Students acquire knowledge and understanding of fine arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.
b) Students learn to use information technology and make sense of the information they find.
c) Students learn to formulate ideas rigorously and communicate them effectively, in speaking and in writing.
d) Students learn to understand a wide diversity of cultures.
e) Students learn to assess arguments.
f) Students learn quantitative skills and how to analyze data.
g) Students learn to work creatively."
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II. Overall Academic and Major Program
"The academic program provides freedom within a common structure to promote balance and coherence, so students design truly liberal educations which are focused, expansive, and useful in the future.a) Students develop expertise in at least one discipline or area.
b) Students organize courses so that study of one subject illuminates and is illuminated by study of another."
- III. Relationships, Community, and Security
"Fundamental to the Kenyon experience is that students and professors develop personal and long-term relationships. ... Kenyon provides an environment that is aesthetically conducive to study and is safe and secure, so that students may direct their attentions to their academic life and extracurricular activities unhindered." - IV. Participation and Involvement
"The opportunity to participate in campus life and the ease and comfort of participation are characteristic of Kenyon. The atmosphere at Kenyon promotes student involvement. Discourse among students is frequent, on both academic and nonacademic issues, and that discourse is enriched by the diversity of the faculty and student body. Students are active in producing their own experience, rather than being primarily receivers or observers. Doing, by oneself and with others, is Kenyon's recipe for learning." - V. Satisfaction and Accomplishment
"Accomplishment of the first four goals translates into high levels of student satisfaction both at Kenyon and years later when former students reflect back on their Kenyon experience. It also translates into high levels of accomplishment for Kenyon graduates."