The Mission of the Troy University, Montgomery Campus College of Arts and Sciences is to provide a supportive educational environment that encourages mature students to develop their skills and enrich their knowledge and technical abilities which are indispensable to success in a changing global environment.

The College of Arts and Sciences places primary emphasis on teaching excellence. Professional service and scholarly activity are pursued to promote a dynamic, technically sound, and community-centered learning experience. To accomplish this, the College recognizes that motivated faculty, staff, and students are essential.

The Mission of the College of Arts and Sciences is consistent with the mission of TROY - Montgomery and recognizes certain fundamental priorities which drive TROY - Montgomery's efforts and activities. For example, the faculty provides a supportive educational environment by mentoring students and in the quality of its response to their needs and requests. It must encourage its students to set high standards and goals, and interact with them in a collegial manner. The faculty encourages them to enrich their knowledge by providing opportunities for intellectual dialogue and by implementing effective teaching pedagogies.

The specific skills and technical abilities students need to graduate from the college's programs and to be effective in the community include: 1) the ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing; 2) the ability to work effectively as a member of a team;
3) leadership competence; 4) computer literacy; 5) critical thinking ability; 6) effective presentation and advocacy skills; 7) the ability to apply, analyze and synthesize ideas; and 8) problem solving ability.

The environment within which its students must function successfully is global and is frequently technology driven. Students must understand the interrelationships between functions, cultures, systems, and the effect on all of these on change. Through their experiences in the classroom, the faculty must prepare them to face the challenges of the world effectively. Therefore, teaching excellence is critical to the faculty's success and to their success.

Certain definitions are important at this point to clarify the college's mission statement. The faculty defines teaching excellence as 1) effectively communicating the subject matter in a way which challenges the students to apply, analyze and synthesize, and 2) providing the mentorship necessary to help students achieve their academic goals. The faculty measures teaching excellence by faculty evaluations, peer evaluations, self assessments, and other feedback.

The faculty defines scholarly activity as the effort to further the collective knowledge in a discipline and to extend the boundaries of its disciplines. Scholarly activity can take many forms including the scholarship of teaching (the development of new teaching materials or methods of instruction which facilitate the student's learning of a discipline), the scholarship of discovery (research investigations that expand the boundaries of the field), the scholarship of integration (efforts to interpret, draw together, and bring new insights to original research), and the scholarship of application (the application of knowledge to problems).

A dynamic learning experience is one in which the student and professor are challenged to excel and within which the elements of growth and progress are keys. A technically sound learning experience means that the subject matter of the college's curricula is up-to-date, accurate, and appropriately reflects the realities of the discipline. A community centered learning experience is one in which learning is facilitated through a partnership between the community and academia.

Finally, learning, growth and development can only occur when individuals are open and motivated to reach a higher level of achievement. In order to achieve optimization, motivation of all partners in the learning process (students, faculty, staff) is vital to success.

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