Chapter 2: Vision, Mission, and Ethical Principles

Emory is a university internationally recognized as an inquiry-driven, ethically engaged, and diverse community, whose members embrace respect and employ creativity, critique, and collaboration in providing courageous leadership for positive transformation in the world through teaching, research, scholarship, health care, and social action. 

Emory University's mission is to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity. 

To fulfill this mission, the university supports teaching from the undergraduate to the advanced graduate and professional levels, and scholarship from basic research to its application in public service. As a comprehensive research university, Emory’s academic programs span a great range from arts and sciences to business, law, theology, and the health professions. These different fields of study are knit together by robust interdisciplinary programs and a core devotion to liberal learning. 

The Emory community is open to all who meet its high standards of academic excellence and integrity. The university welcomes a diversity of ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, religious, national, and international backgrounds, believing that the intellectual and social energy that results from such diversity is critical to advancing knowledge. 

Emory is committed to opening disciplinary boundaries and supporting interdisciplinary research and teaching from a global perspective. Along with this, Emory strives to create a community characterized by respectful and mutually supportive interaction among faculty, students, staff, and the wider world. 

In keeping with the demand that teaching, learning, research, and service be measured by high standards of integrity and excellence, and believing that each person and every level of scholarly activity should be valued on its own merits, the university aims to imbue scholarship at Emory with a commitment to humane teaching and mentorship and a respectful interaction among faculty, students, and staff; open disciplinary boundaries that encourage integrative teaching, research, and scholarship; a commitment to use knowledge to improve human well-being; and a global perspective on the human condition. 

The highest degree of integrity is expected of all members of the Emory community. 

The university’s resources, both natural and fiscal, are entrusted to us for the common good and for future generations; the university and we, its members, are expected to exercise wise stewardship over these resources and to guard against their misappropriation or misuse. All conflicts of interest and of commitment are to be promptly addressed, and all possible steps are to be taken to eliminate the conflicts or to manage them to ensure that they do not undermine the integrity of our institution or ourselves. 

Emory seeks to uphold the dignity and rights of all persons through fair treatment, honest dealing, and respect. Emory is committed to creating an environment of work, teaching, living, and learning that enables all persons to strive toward their highest potential. Members of the Emory community in positions of authority carry a particular obligation to exercise care and compassion, and appropriately safeguard confidential or personal information. 

As an organization comprising thousands of persons in a shared enterprise, Emory fosters collegiality in order to advance our mission of teaching, research, service, and health care. While frictions often may emerge, we seek to resolve conflict in a spirit of mutual respect through the active practice of community. 

By our participation in the Emory community, each of us assumes responsibility for our actions and will be held accountable for them. Similarly, members of our community are responsible for holding each other and the university to these ethical principles. Members of the Emory community are expected to abide by these principles, regardless of the letter of the law.