All American colleges and universities bear a family resemblance to one another as they come from a common set of ancestors in Europe and colonial America. Within that larger family, Valparaiso University belongs to a small and distinctive group. It is neither a large research university nor a small liberal arts college. At the same time that it promotes a basic liberal arts curriculum, it features strong undergraduate colleges of Engineering, Nursing, and Business Administration, a professional direction lacking in the conventional liberal arts college. Conversely, the University is not a cluster of professional colleges which merely pays lip service to the liberal arts. Education in the liberal arts is the foundation of every academic program, and the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest unit in the University, carries on many vital programs of its own. This combination of liberal and professional studies of such variety within an institution of modest size is rare in American higher education. Broad enough in curriculum and in variety of programs to be a university, still Valparaiso University emphasizes undergraduate teaching in the manner of the traditional small college, with many small classes and strong individual guidance. While the University focuses on undergraduate education, it maintains a modest graduate program as well as a fine law school. Valparaiso University is also a founding member of the Associated New American Colleges, a national consortium of small to mid-sized colleges and universities that are committed to the ideal of integrating liberal and professional studies. Valparaiso University’s unique status as an independent Lutheran University supplies the rationale for this special combination of liberal and professional studies. No church body has control or authority over the University, which is owned and operated by the Lutheran University Association. Valparaiso is therefore both free and responsible to realize an educational ideal informed by the best traditions of Lutheran Christianity and of liberal and professional studies.

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