Belmont's Governing Ideas

Our vision, mission and values jointly known as the university's "governing ideas" distinguish us as a university that seeks to serve students from diverse backgrounds within a Christian community. These ideas honor our past, define our present, and describe our future. The statements honor our past by building upon the principles of academic excellence, Christian community, and service to others that have long been the hallmarks of a Belmont education. Our present is defined, by our governing ideas, in proclaiming the student-centered nature of a Belmont education, the ends to which we at Belmont engage in the experience of teaching and learning. Finally, our governing ideas enhance our future because our work to achieve this high calling is continual.

As a Belmont University family of students, faculty, staff, and board, we value honesty, mutual respect, and listening and learning from everyone which is the foundation that ensures our efforts to build the promising future that is uniquely Belmont's.

Robert C. Fisher, President

Belmont University Vision, Mission and Values

I. Vision:

To be a leader among teaching universities, bringing together the best of liberal arts and professional education in a Christian community of learning and service.

II.  Mission Statement:

Belmont University is a student-centered Christian community providing an academically challenging education that empowers men and women of diverse backgrounds to engage and transform the world with disciplined intelligence, compassion, courage and faith.

• Belmont University is student-centered.  The university provides an environment for students to develop intellectually, spiritually, socially and physically through experiences of learning and research, leading and serving, success and failure, and consideration and choice.  Faculty, administration and staff commit themselves to guide and challenge students to develop their full potential in order to lead lives of meaning and purpose.
• Belmont University is a Christian community.  The University faculty, administration and staff uphold Jesus as the Christ and as the measure for all things.  Students encounter Christian values relevant to personal growth, service, and spiritual maturity and are expected to commit themselves to high moral standards.
• Belmont University is academically challenging.  The university offers rigorous undergraduate and graduate programs emphasizing knowledge and discernment, intellectual discourse and debate, and humble engagement of cultural and social perspectives within a framework of ethical and moral reflection.  All learning contexts stress the skills and dispositions necessary for lifelong learning and the sustaining value of higher education in each person's professional and personal life.
• Belmont University welcomes men and women from diverse backgrounds.  The university upholds the dignity of all and fosters an atmosphere of respect for the civil expression of divergent perspectives that enables students to learn, live, work and socialize together.
• Belmont University empowers men and women to engage and transform the world.  The university prepares students to use their intellectual skills, creativity and faith to meet the challenges and opportunities that face the human community. 

III.  Values:

As a student-centered Christian community with a rich Baptist heritage, Belmont University upholds the following core values as essential to intellectual, spiritual, personal and corporate life:

Integrity
Inquiry
Collaboration
Service
Humility