Servant leadership, enterprise, quality, innovation, and caring are the five core values that guide Johnson C. Smith University. At this moment in the Academic Year, students, full-time faculty members, full-time staff members, alumni, trustees and friends are engaged in the venture of moving this historic institution from good to great on the higher educational landscape.

There is no doubt that Johnson C. Smith University is poised to become Charlotte’s very own nationally recognized premier independent urban university. Siince its founding in 1867; the institutions history attests to this fact.

Johnson C. Smith University’s narrative of achievements is a compelling story of students and teachers mobilizing intellectual capital for work and investments in productive enterprises throughout the Queen City of the South and beyond her borders.

Johnson C. Smith University will be recognized for a superb faculty, top-quality and highly motivated national and international students, outstanding teaching and learning, an excellent applied research focus, and a comprehensive, cohesive curriculum at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The University’s core institutional beliefs will pivot toward a comprehensive value-based quality liberal education; career preparation; service orientation to the communities surrounding the University; and alliances with Charlotte’s communities, professional organizations, businesses and corporations.

Six priorities at the University’s forefront include:

1. Academic Excellence – Shift the weight between quantity and quality in the University’s policies and procedures that currently lean toward quantity, which in effect has led to inconsistent levels of Smith’s programs, faculty and students;
2. Operational Performance – Develop a focused University strategy that is based on a comprehensive management information system and  measurable  outcomes;
3. Advising Research Mastery – Attract, hire, and maintain a differential faculty of teacher advisers, teacher scholars, and applied researchers;
4. Diversity – Attract a critical mass of highly motivated, high achieving students across racial, ethnic, and national boundaries;
5. Distinctive Student Experience – Accelerate the University’s scheduled maintenance plan, especially in the classrooms and dormitories;
6. Community Engagement – Lead sustained and actionable conversations with City and coalitions of developers concerning revitalization of the Urban Distinct that is Johnson C. Smith University’s front door.