Life Preparation Concepts

The University promotes the following five life preparation concepts through its programs and activities: values and ethics, communication, leadership, service, and wellness. Understanding and applying these concepts should equip students for future leadership roles. Charleston Southern University seeks to develop students with Christian values who will also have a broad-based liberal arts education. These life preparation concepts are defined as follows:

By "values" this institution advocates those qualities expressed by Christ when he taught, "You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ... (and) your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39). Charleston Southern takes these "greatest commandments" to include a life of faith in word and action, a reverence for God's creation and for the diversity of mankind, respect for all God's gifts including the gift of selfhood, and concern for individuals living in a community that seeks to appreciate justice, truth, and beauty.

"Ethics" is defined as a capacity and an inclination to learn about, and to deliberately choose, the behavior that reflects the values of a Christian community.

The term communication refers primarily to the exchange of ideas orally, visually, or in writing. People associated with a Christian institution should concern themselves with ethical and practical qualities of communication. They should dedicate themselves to an ideal which stresses not only clarity and persuasiveness, but also accuracy and truth. Effective communication should take place in the classroom, within the university family, and between the University and the public.

Leadership is the ability to motivate self and others to the accomplishment of goals within ethical boundaries using skills such as motivation, persuasion, analytical thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving and characteristics such as interpersonal skills, openness, sensitivity, and self-knowledge.

Service is the giving of one's time and energy in order to benefit the Charleston Southern University family or the community at large.

Wellness is not merely the absence of disease, but the proper balance among a person's physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental health, which results in the ability of each person to live most effectively within his/her potentialities.