Union, a college of liberal arts and engineering, is committed to three basic beliefs about individual development through learning.

First, the College believes it is obligated to create in students a lifelong commitment to truth and joy in learning, so that students weave the pursuit of knowledge into the fabric of their lives, and develop a historical awareness and intellectual integrity that will support a resolve to defend the dignity of all people.

Second, the College believes that knowledge of the self is an important goal of liberal education, a goal that is best attained as one learns more about other cultures and one's own. Consequently, we offer extensive opportunities for study abroad, and curricular and residential experiences that enable students to see the ways in which they are part of something larger — a community, a culture, and a world of many cultures.

Third, the College believes that the close relationship between its faculty and students motivates students to learn, as manifested most clearly in undergraduate research and other forms of independent study. We therefore maintain a community of inquiry, discourse, and experiment in which it is clear that scholarship and teaching are parts of a single enterprise. Consistent with the belief that professional education is best done in the context of the liberal arts undertaking, the College supports the oldest such engineering program in the nation.

In many respects, then. Union is distinctive, but in an important sense it is like other good liberal arts colleges, with strong departments, staffed by a scholarly faculty with an exacting care for the students' accuracy of understanding and for the improvement of their ability to do their work well. One conviction underlies life at Union, its common beliefs, and its long heritage: in citizenship as well as work, a liberal education is the best path to personal fulfillment.