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MISSION OF MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY MOORHEAD
Minnesota State University Moorhead is a caring community promising all students the opportunity to discover their passions, the rigor to develop intellectually and the versatility to shape a chaning world.
Minnesota State University Moorhead Vision Statement:
Minnesota State University Moorhead will be a welcoming educational community that offers regorous courses of study and places high expectations upon its students. Our strong commitment to faculty-mentored undergraduate research and intellectual growth will provide students with continual opportunities for personal and professional achievement. MSUM will continue to foster an enviroment that encourages students to become versatile, thoughtful, innovative, and engaged leaderrs who contribute to their professions and their communities.
MSUM values diversity and mutual respect and will strive to instill these ideals throughout the institution. MSUM honors its heritage as a respected, student-focused, public university and will continue to enhance our students' lives at the same time that it contributes to the community and the region. MSUM will offer graduate and professional programs that contribute to the state and region through increased collaboration with local and state business, industry, and human services to assuew optinal preparation of graduates.
Minnesota State University Moorhead will build upon a solid foundation of high quality teaching and learning as it commits to a futue as the premier liberal arts and sciences-based university in the region. Vision details
Minnesota State University Moorhead’s institutional life began in 1887 when, two years after a bill calling for its establishment was approved by the Minnesota legislature, funds were appropriated for the construction of campus buildings. Moorhead Normal School was built on land deeded to the city by the bill’s author, S. G. Comstock, a former Clay County Attorney and, later, an executive with James J. Hill’s Great Northern Rail Road. The campus opened for classes under its first president, Livingston Lord, in August of 1888.
Moorhead Normal School was Minnesota’s fourth such institution, charged with the education of those who would teach in the area’s rural schoolhouses. Students graduated from these normal schools after two years, with a license to teach grades K (or 1) through 8. By the second decade of the 1900s, the demand for better-educated teachers, together with the increased numbers of students attending high school, was the motive force that prompted the development of a four-year college curriculum. This progress was marked by the school’s first name change, to Moorhead State Teachers College, in April of 1921.
In late April-early May 1957, the Minnesota state legislature approved another name change, bringing into existence Moorhead State College. This change reflected the institution’s “increasing diversity and breadth of purpose” (graduate programs began in 1953), and also came at a time when the campus was going through something of a construction “boomlet.” Over the next 18 years, the campus added 11 new buildings and numerous new programs. The 18 years of Moorhead State College also saw the establishment of that unique educational resource, the Tri-College University.
On August 1, 1975, a ceremony was held on campus to mark the renaming of the college to Moorhead State University. All other state colleges were also made over into state universities at the same time. The time of this change was surrounded by the continued growth of the university student body, a growth mirrored by the number of majors offered, which rose to more than 90 (the university currently offers more than 100 majors).
In 1998, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees approved a policy authorizing the seven state universities to change their names if they wished to do so. Accordingly, after consultation with students, faculty, staff, and alumni, MSU President Roland Barden notified the MnSCU board of the campus’s fifth name change. On July 1, 2000, the campus opened its doors as Minnesota State University Moorhead.
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