How to Create and Edit Mission Statements

 

Create a New Mission Statement

If you are entering an organization’s mission statement for the first time, click the Add Mission link for that organization.
 
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You will be taken to the Information tab of the Organization Profile, where you will see a text box to enter your mission statement. You can either type the mission statement directly into the text area or copy and paste from another source. Please note that you have a 2,000 character limit, measured by a tracker that updates as you enter text.
 
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Click the checkmark button to save your changes. You may also click the X button to undo any changes you made. 
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Once you save your changes, the Mission Statement area of your Information tab will update with the text you entered, and you will see a Last Updated date that tracks changes.
 
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NOTE: Once a mission statement is entered, it cannot be completely deleted. 

Edit or Revise an Existing Mission Statement

If you want to edit of revise your organization’s mission statement from your home page, click the View Mission link for that organization’s dashboard.
 
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You will be taken to the Information tab of your Organization Profile, where you will see your organization’s current mission statement. Click the menu button to the right in order to make changes to your Mission Statement.
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You will be prompted with two choices: to Edit or Revise your mission statement. Choose Edit if you need to make minor changes to your current mission statement. Choose Revise if your organization has a new Mission Statement to enter. If you revise your Mission Statement, older versions of your Mission Statement will be archived for reference.
 
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Edit a Mission Statement

When you select the Edit option, a text box will appear, allowing you to make changes to your mission statement. You can either type your mission statement directly into the text area or copy and paste from another source. Click the checkmark button to save your changes. You may also click the X button to undo any changes you made.
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Once you save your changes, the mission statement area of your organization’s Information tab will update with the text you entered, and you will see a Last Updated date to reflect when your changes were made.
 
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Revise a Mission Statement

When you select the Revise option, a new panel will open on the right side of your screen to enter information about your new mission statement. The first area to enter information into is the New Mission Statement text response area, where you can either type your new mission statement or copy and paste it from another source.
 
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You must then use the Effective Academic Year drop-down menu to select the year when your new mission statement goes into effect. If you do not see a particular year in this list, please contact a Planning & Self-Study administrator at your institution for clarification. 
 
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You may optionally use the Notes text response area to provide any additional context about your revised Mission Statement. When you are finished, click Create in the upper right-hand corner to save your changes, or click Cancel to undo your changes and delete any content you entered.
 
Once you save your changes, you may view previous versions of your mission statement by clicking View all revisions.
 
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This will open a panel on the right side of your screen which shows a history of every revised version of your mission statement. The most current revision of an outcome is labeled as such.
 
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You can restore a previous version of a mission statement by first clicking on that version, then clicking the Restore link for it. On the following page that opens, identify an Effective Academic Year for your restored mission statement, add optional Notes to provide additional context, then click the Restore button. 
 
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Mission Statements are tied to reporting years, annual assessment plans, and program reviews. It has been found that if there is no current reporting year in the system, editing a Mission Statement causes some technical issues in the Program Review functionality. This is because program reviews are tied to reporting years. If a mission statement is deleted after it was tied to a reporting year, this may cause a server error in the program review area. As a result, we’ve made some enhancements to improve the usability of this field. 

 

If you have a saved mission statement, you cannot delete that mission statement completely. Instead, you can edit the mission statement and put in a placeholder, such as “Mission to be added.”

 
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View of the Validation when a mission Statement field is empty.
 
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View of the error message when there is no current reporting year for that institute.

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