Who We Are
Welcome to Goshen College
Explore more about what matters here at Goshen College.
Mission
Goshen College transforms local and global communities through courageous, creative and compassionate leaders. Shaped by Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, we integrate academic excellence and real-world experience with active love for God and neighbor.
Vision
Goshen College will cultivate joy, growth and purpose, preparing students to thrive in life, leadership and service. Rooted in the way of Jesus, we will seek inclusive community and transformative justice in all that we do.
Core Values
Goshen College is a community of faith and learning built on five core values: Christ-centeredness, passionate learning, servant leadership, compassionate peacemaking and global citizenship.
- a reflective faith that nurtures spiritual growth in individual and corporate contexts
- an active faith that informs all life’s choices
- the mastery of a major field of study as the basis for life-long learning, service, relationships, and work in a socially and culturally diverse context
- an extensive foundation of knowledge, skills, processes and methodologies derived from a liberal arts curriculum that are required for systematic study and problem solving
- a leadership ability that empowers self and others
- a healthy understanding of self and others that is reflected in relationships of interdependence and mutual accountability
- a personal integrity that fosters the ability to resolve conflict and to promote justice
- a commitment to diversity in all of its forms both conceptually and in practice
- an intercultural openness with the ability to function effectively with people of other world views
- a responsible understanding of stewardship for human systems and the environment in a multicultural world
Motto — “Culture for Service”
Culture for Service – we see it flying on banners, printed on Goshen College literature and stuck on car windows. It says something about the college and its graduates in a way that few other college mottoes do. Culture for Service is a call to action, a call to learn and a reminder of how our Christian values affect the work we do.
Since its beginnings, the college has felt the impact of the twin harmonies of these words, “culture” and “service.” It has sometimes struggled to define how the dual concepts combine into a campus ideal. Described as a “felicitous turn of phrase” by Susan Fisher Miller in Culture for Service: A History of Goshen College, 1894-1994, the motto serves not just as a theoretical challenge but as a “real world” set of instructions for the campus community to incorporate into its life and growth.
Coined in 1903, the phrase has survived for over a century with the college, through periods of growth and change both internal and external. Once, when the motto came under scrutiny in 1943, GC faculty were asked to evaluate Culture for Service. In a description of its relevance to the campus and its students, the faculty members described the motto as “beautiful and satisfactory.” “Culture for Service also has significance for past pupils,” they said.
A Call to Serve
Students across the country are catching this spirit. According to a fall 1996 survey by the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, freshmen entering U.S. colleges and universities are increasingly service-minded. The survey of more than 250,000 freshmen shows record numbers of students doing volunteer work and record numbers spending at least an hour a week doing service.
When they arrive at GC, all students are encouraged to engage in both the theoretical exploration of service and hands-on projects and programs. This happens by responding to local service agencies that come to campus each fall to engage students; donating blood; participating in the annual Celebrate Service Day; and joining a mid-term break service trip.
Since 1968, students have often learned how broadly service can be defined during Study-Service Term when they spend half the semester in a “service assignment.” During that time, students have spent roughly 170,000 hours at varying types of service during this portion of their experience abroad. Students are often reminded that service includes “being,” “understanding” and “accompanying,” as well as “doing.”
Adapted from the article ‘Culture for Service: a journey, an action, a commitment, a motto’ written by Rachel Lapp ’95 which appeared in the March 1998 issue of the Goshen College Bulletin.
Alma Mater
Words by M. E. Miller, melody by J. D. Brunk
Lyrics
There’s a spot in Indiana where the leafy Maple grows;
‘Tis our dear, beloved city where the Elkhart River flows.
‘Tis a spot we love most dearly.
‘Tis a spot we’ll cherish long
After youth and strength have faded, and the world has heard our song.
Chorus
Goshen College ever singing, to our motto we’ll be true,
Honor to our Master bringing, Alma Mater we love you.
Here we learn life’s duties doing in our sacred college halls.
First-year, soph’more, junior, senior answer “Aye” when duty calls.
All our talents marked for service, and our hearts beat warm and true.
Ever lead us onward, upward, ever shall our strength renew.
Chorus
Goshen College ever singing, to our motto we’ll be true,
Honor to our Master bringing, Alma Mater we love you.
And the lasting ties of friendship, woven through with hopes and fears,
May they ne’er be brok’n asunder in the distant coming years.
Though our future paths may lead us to fair heights we cannot see,
Alma Mater, ‘ere we leave you, loyalty we pledge to thee.
Chorus
Goshen College ever singing, to our motto we’ll be true,
Honor to our Master bringing, Alma Mater we love you.