Seattle Pacific University will be a place that knows and understands what's going on in the world.

Sometimes people imagine that a college or university should be like a monastery: isolated, insulated from the volatile goings on in the world, a perfect, protected place to learn.

 We think this is absolutely the wrong model for a university in our time. An intellectual ghetto will not do, a cloistered place where we talk only to ourselves and to other academics. As a Christian university, we cannot indulge in the false comfort of Christian separatism. We have to be in the mix.

 Seattle Pacific University must portray genuine openness, fearless engagement, confident encounter. This means connected research, a scholarship of engagement. It means sending students out into the city, in service, for internships, ensuring that our graduates are equipped to negotiate the great cities around the globe. It means tackling head-on the tough issues of the day. It means bringing all kinds of people into our midst. It means taking risks.

 We seek to live and do our work as a university right out there where the world loves and suffers and thrives and fears.