A Picture of How PSU is Fulfilling its Mission and Goals

The PSU Portfolio gives you the opportunity to experience first hand the ways in which PSU is striving to meet its primary mission to "enhance the intellectual, social, cultural, and economic qualities of urban life" in our community. As an urban university, PSU feels a special commitment to meet its learning goals, engage in continuous assessment and improvement, encourage diversity on campus and in the curriculum, make use of technology, and facilitate connections in the community.

A View of PSU as a Whole : Five Themes

Each of the Portfolio's five themes give a distinct but interrelated view of PSU as a whole. They represent the five key areas where PSU is concentrating its improvement efforts. They also serve as a focus for discussions, analysis and reflection for faculty, staff, students, and community members.

A Reflection and Planning Tool

PSU is committed to a process of self-reflection that can be used to help in future planning. Each of the Portfolio's themes will reflect an overarching set of goals and illustrate how those efforts are manifesting themselves in practice throughout the institution.

The hope is that each Portfolio theme will also allow for reflection in our goal areas, to assess where we are excelling and where we are not. It will also help to refine and adjust the goals where necessary.

A Vehicle for Communication

An important goal for PSU as an urban institution is to encourage discussions within and without the University, including as diverse a group of participants as possible. It is hoped that the Portfolio will become a vehicle for the rich variety of voices that are part of our institution and community at large.

Currently, there are many efforts underway at PSU to improve upon the way we assess student learning, encourage diversity in the classroom, make use of technology, and much more. However, there isn't a unifying vehicle for communication between departments, across colleges, between students and faculty, or between PSU and the community at large.

The Portfolio will be updated by faculty, staff, students, and community members regularly to record the ongoing progress in each of the five themes. The Portfolio also has discussion boards to allow for ongoing, interactive discussion of various topics.