• To provide engaging, meaningful and genuine experiences for our students and prepare them to be responsible, creative and open-minded.
• To foster an environment that welcomes and values the talents and energies of everyone who chooses to join us as a student, a faculty member, a staff member or an administrator.
• To open up the world of discovery and inquiry for all who seek to learn and to use what they learn to make the world a better place.
• To infuse all that we do with an abiding moral imagination that views with sympathy the circumstances of other peoples’ lives.
• To draw talented people to our community who become neighbors, friends, co-workers, customers and volunteers.
• To play a role in economic and community development and the fostering of entrepreneurship and innovation, a long-standing tradition in this region. 

Winona State University is also a product of this special place along the banks of the Upper Mississippi. We have been an integral part of the community of Winona, Minnesota, from the very beginning when the citizens of the City of Winona contributed $7,000 to secure the right to establish the first Normal School west of the Mississippi in the same year that Minnesota became a state. So from the beginning, we were a product of a community seeking to prepare educators for its children and willing to work together to do so.

From the beginning we offered a rigorous curriculum and a model that reflected the most advanced thinking of its time. Our forebears were

• as innovative as we seek to be.
• as connected to the community in spirit and purpose as we are.
• as eager to explore the world.
• as advanced in their thinking in the context of their times.
• as committed to the highest standards of their profession.
• as dedicated to their students.
• as shaped by the history, physical setting and culture of this classic river town of Winona and the growing community of Rochester.

Over the years we have grown in size, in complexity, in stature among our peers, and in influence. Our graduates have shaped their professions, their communities, raised above average children—Minnesotan or not---and have brought back stories to tell our current students when they return to campus. As we have passed through the decades we have been shaped by the spirit of the times, tested in many ways and risen to the challenge and grown until we now have more than 8,100 students in Winona and Rochester combined.

We have just launched our first doctoral program—the Doctorate of Nursing Practice. True to our heritage of doing things in innovative ways, our entry into doctoral status is made possible by a very special four-way collaboration of Winona State University; Metropolitan State University; Minnesota State University, Mankato; and Minnesota State University, Moorhead. The design reflects a philosophy appropriate for our era, the same underlying logic that shapes our Center of Excellence in Health Science Education and Practice, now called HealthForce Minnesota. It reflects a genuine partnership between higher education and practitioners. It integrates research, education and practice. It seeks solutions to contemporary problems in collaboration with our colleagues in health care rather than on their behalf. It is adaptive in its approach and moves beyond the old model of expertise (application of well established research to well-defined problems) to a new model that incorporates a cycle of continuous discovery, solution-finding and application.

The same story can be told about the plans we have for the future—our Wellness Complex, our Integrated Academic Services for students, our evolving approach to faculty support and career development, our experience as a laptop university, our growing collaborations with the people of this region, the expansion of the arts, and our study of the life and environment of the Upper Mississippi as we ply the waters of this river on the River Explorer.   

We have a lot to look forward to as we celebrate the accomplishments of the past and ponder the lessons we can learn from the experiences of our predecessors.

View President Ramaley's Inauguration Website.

Last Modified: Friday, November 02, 2007 16:41 by Andrea Mikkelsen