Mission & Purpose
WHY AND FOR WHOM ST. STEPHEN'S UNIVERSITY EXISTS
The Mission of St. Stephen's University is to prepare people, through academic, personal, and spiritual development, for a life of justice, beauty, and compassion, enabling a humble, creative engagement with their world.
At St. Stephen’s University, our mission is to serve students with opportunities for academic excellence, creative and integrated thinking, spiritual formation, and global exposure, with the flexibility to earn a degree while remaining faithful to their family and career obligations.
With our emphasis on whole-person transformation and integrative thinking, we focus on equipping students to better serve their communities — personally, professionally, and publicly. As a result, our cohorts are comprised of a broad range of learners from across the world, including recent college graduates, experienced ministers, therapists and spiritual directors, peacebuilders and activists, advocates for the oppressed and marginalized, contemplatives, educators and business leaders, and even several retirees.
Courses are led by seasoned scholars and practitioners in their fields who offer a high level of direct engagement as companions in our students’ development. We honour our various disciplines by offering students the best sources and lessons possible, including ‘brave space’ exposure to a variety of theological and cultural perspectives, identified for conversation and analysis.
‘Brave space’ means that we enter uncomfortable and unavoidable conversations — bravely — providing space to deconstruct and process whatever surfaces in healthy ways, whether with the professor, a spiritual director, or fellow students.
St. Stephen’s University is located on the homeland of the Peskotomuhkati (Passamaquoddy) people. We are grateful for their welcome and friendship, and we are always seeking ways in which we can develop our relationship in mutually respectful ways, including our conversations with Chief Hugh Akagi and others about our Reconciliation Studies program. It is a privilege that we are able to locate some of our program on the Peskotomuhkati Nation’s Camp Chiputneticook (15 minutes north of St. Stephen’s University).
We respect the intentions of the Treaties of Peace and Friendship, while acknowledging the many ways in which governments and others have failed to honour their part of those agreements. It is our desire to live up to the responsibility of being “treaty relatives.”