Guiding Principles and Ideas

A woman gazes at a brightly lit display, creating a festive atmosphere. She is dressed in a black top and skirt, standing in a minimalist gallery space with soft lighting and fabric draping in the background.

Guiding Principles

As we began the process of building this new strategic plan, we needed to ensure that our work would be based on guiding principles that reflected Pratt’s self-understanding and our role in the world. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education asks that we revisit our mission on a regular cycle, understanding that doing so ensures continued and intentional engagement with our core purpose. The formulation of a vision for the next 5–10 years followed from that work, as did the articulation of the values that ground everything that we do.

The following are Pratt’s new guiding principles: mission, vision, and values, which were workshopped and crafted during the 2024 fall semester.

Mission

Pratt Institute educates artists and creative professionals who shape the world we live in.

Vision

Pratt will be the standard-setter among creative institutions.

A good vision statement sets a measurable, attainable, and inspiring five-to-ten-year goal, against which guiding ideas, growth strategies, goals, and future tactics can be reviewed—and success measured—as we implement the plan.

Our vision challenges us to understand what it means to set the standard in the creative, academic, and operational fields in which we operate, and to set our goals to realize this ambitious vision.

Values

People at Pratt are:

Resourceful and Collaborative Problem Solvers
Socially Responsible and Equity-Centered Creatives
Adaptable and Resilient Global Stewards
Inquisitive and Compassionate Community Members

Our values are aspirational and distinctive standards for how people at Pratt relate to one another.

By framing our values in terms of how people at Pratt relate to each other (rather than as a long list of abstract attributes), we identified who we are at our best and what we challenge one another to be. In turn, we used these values as the basis for the decisions we made as we developed this strategic plan and for all decision making going forward.

Guiding Ideas

These guiding ideas emerged from our work in the first half of the strategic planning process, in fall 2024, providing a framework for the growth strategies, goals, and initiatives that were developed during the spring of 2025.

Strategic Direction

Where do we want to be in the future?

By 2030, Pratt will be setting the standard for academic innovation, financial health, and institutional resilience among creative institutions.

Value Proposition

Why do students come to Pratt?

Pratt’s reputation for facilitating high-quality creative educational experiences that lead to meaningful careers.

Guiding Principles and Ideas