May 25, 2007
To: Members of the University-Wide Liberal Education Reform Team
From: Richard H. Wells, Chancellor
Lane Earns, Provost and Vice Chancellor
Re: Team Charge, Guiding Principles, and Learning Outcomes
University-Wide Initiative: Liberal Education Reform
It is our pleasure to provide confirmation of your assignment to the University-Wide Liberal Education Reform Team. It is important to note that this is not a committee or task force. Rather, it is a group of people selected because of their expertise and commitment to work together toward liberal education reform goals as they hold themselves mutually accountable. All team members will be expected to serve for a minimum of two years. The University-Wide Liberal Education Reform Team will devise a plan to ensure a sense of ownership and participation in the planning processes among relevant staff, student and faculty members. The members of the Team will be charged formally on June 6, 2007 at 8:00AM.
The UW Oshkosh administrative and governance leaders are committed to making our top educational priority the development of a university-wide liberal education reform plan. The liberal education reform team and plan will be guided by the framework established by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) report College Learning for the New Global Century, which spells out the essential aims, learning outcomes, and guiding principles for a twenty-first-century college education. The plan will build upon UW Oshkosh’s nationally acclaimed work joining the AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative with the American Council on Education (ACE) Solutions for Our Future Campaign.
Rationale for a University-Wide Liberal Education Reform Team/Plan
The following extract titled Liberal Education and American Capability from the College Learning for the New Global Century report (13-14) explains the importance of a broad-based liberal education:
Reflecting the traditions of American higher education since the founding, the term “liberal education” headlines the kinds of learning needed for a free society and for the full development of human talent. Liberal education has always been this nation’s signature educational tradition, and this report builds on its core values: expanding horizons, building understanding of the wider world, honing analytical and communication skills, and fostering responsibilities beyond self. However, in a deliberate break with the academic categories developed in the twentieth century, the LEAP National Leadership Council disputes the idea that liberal education is achieved only through studies in arts and sciences disciplines. It also challenges the conventional view that liberal education is, by definition, “nonvocational.”
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The council defines liberal education for the twenty-first century as a comprehensive set of aims and outcomes that are essential for all students because they are important to all fields of endeavor. Today, in an economy that is dependent on innovation and global savvy, these outcomes have become the keys to economic vitality and individual opportunity. They are the foundations for American success in all fields—from technology and the sciences to communications and the creative arts.
The LEAP National Leadership Council recommends, therefore, that the essential aims and outcomes be emphasized across every field of college study, whether the field is conventionally considered one of the arts and sciences disciplines or whether it is one of the professional and technical fields (business, engineering, education, health, the performing arts, etc.) in which the majority of college students currently major (emphasis added). General education plays a role, but it is not possible to squeeze all these important aims into the general education program alone. The majors must address them as well.
The Charge for the Team
We are charging the team to be guided by the framework established by the LEAP initiative of the AAC&U, which represents leading-edge research and best practices in liberal education, because we wish to jump-start our reform of liberal education. We have great respect for faculty governance and will support the team’s recommendations, reached after careful examination and analysis of the AAC&U’s essential aims, learning outcomes and guiding principles, to adopt or modify sections of the report for inclusion in the liberal education reform plan on campus. The Provost and Vice Chancellor will ensure that the team’s recommendations are moved through the appropriate governance channels.
The team is charged with designing a liberal education reform plan that will:
1. Address the Higher Learning Commission’s concerns about our General Education program (detailed below).
2. Support and help position the University to achieve the essential learning outcomes and the principles of excellence found in the College Learning for the New Global Century report (see below).
3. Help identify which of the 15 recommendations put forward in the College Learning for the New Global Century report are relevant to developing a cross-campus distinctiveness in liberal education at UW Oshkosh (see Appendix A).
4. Help ensure that the central responsibility for design and delivery of a liberal education reform plan, while clearly led by faculty across all colleges, involves the campus-wide community especially the Library and the Division of Student Affairs.
5. Help identify best practices for the University community to use to assess the essential learning outcomes found in the College Learning for the New Global Century report.
6. Review and recommend appropriate use of the AAC&U’s “Communicating Commitment to Liberal Education: A Self-Study Guide for Institutions” to assess broad-based, campus-wide commitment to liberal education.
7. The team will report to the Provost and Vice Chancellor submitting annual reports in May of the team’s progress in planning and moving forward recommended programs to reform liberal education across campus. The Provost will distribute the report for consideration by governance groups, vice chancellors and deans.
Team Goals
In accomplishing the team charge, it is very important to pursue the following goals:
· Maximize campus ownership of the planning process and the resulting plan;
· Use AAC&U and LEAP research findings and insights to analyze existing data and documents;
· Design and merge a plan with the Academic Program and Student Outcome Assessment and the Enrollment and Student Support operational plans;
· Execute, assess and refine the plan.
Liberal Education: Conceptual Framework
We will use the concept of liberal education developed by the AAC&U.
The following “Statement on Liberal Education” (available online at http://www.aacu.org/About/statements/liberal_learning.cfm) was adopted by the Board of Directors of the AAC&U in October 1998:
A truly liberal education is one that prepares us to live responsible, productive, and creative lives in a dramatically changing world. It is an education that fosters a well-grounded intellectual resilience, a disposition toward lifelong learning, and an acceptance of responsibility for the ethical consequences of our ideas and actions. Liberal education requires that we understand the foundations of knowledge and inquiry about nature, culture and society; that we master core skills of perception, analysis, and expression; that we cultivate a respect for truth; that we recognize the importance of historical and cultural context; and that we explore connections among formal learning, citizenship, and service to our communities.
We experience the benefits of liberal learning by pursuing intellectual work that is honest, challenging, and significant, and by preparing ourselves to use knowledge and power in responsible ways. Liberal learning is not confined to particular fields of study. What matters in liberal education is substantial content, rigorous methodology and an active engagement with the societal, ethical, and practical implications of our learning. The spirit and value of liberal learning are equally relevant to all forms of higher education and to all students.
Because liberal learning aims to free us from the constraints of ignorance, sectarianism, and myopia, it prizes curiosity and seeks to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. By its nature, therefore, liberal learning is global and pluralistic. It embraces the diversity of ideas and experiences that characterize the social, natural, and intellectual world. To acknowledge such diversity in all its forms is both an intellectual commitment and a social responsibility, for nothing less will equip us to understand our world and to pursue fruitful lives.
The ability to think, to learn, and to express oneself both rigorously and creatively, the capacity to understand ideas and issues in context, the commitment to live in society, and the yearning for truth are fundamental features of our humanity. In centering education upon these qualities, liberal learning is society’s best investment in our shared future.
The Four sets of Essential Learning Outcomes
The following extract of “What Matters in College?” from the College Learning for the New Global Century report (12) explains the broad-based nature of the essential learning outcomes:
The LEAP National Leadership Council calls on American society to give new priority to a set of educational outcomes that all students need from higher learning, outcomes that are closely calibrated with the challenges of a complex and volatile world.
Keyed to work, life, and citizenship, the essential learning outcomes recommended in this report are important for all students and should be fostered and developed across the entire educational experience, and in the context of students’ major fields.
The LEAP National Leadership Council does not call for a “onesize- fits-all” curriculum. The recommended learning outcomes can and should be achieved through many different programs of study and in all collegiate institutions, including colleges, community colleges and technical institutes, and universities, both public and private.
The Four sets of Essential Learning Outcomes are:
1. KNOWLEDGE OF HUMAN CULTURES AND THE PHYSICAL AND NATURAL WORLD
· Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts
Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring
2. INTELLECTUAL AND PRACTICAL SKILLS, INCLUDING
· Inquiry and analysis
· Critical and creative thinking
· Written and oral communication
· Quantitative literacy
· Information literacy
· Teamwork and problem solving
Practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance
3. PERSONAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, INCLUDING
· Civic knowledge and engagement--local and global
· Intercultural knowledge and competence
· Ethical reasoning and action
· Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
Anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges
4. INTEGRATIVE LEARNING, INCLUDING
· Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies
Demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings and complex problems
The Seven Principles of Excellence
The following extract titled “A New Framework for Excellence” from the report, College Learning for the new Global Century (14-15) describes the versatility of the principles of excellence:
The LEAP National Leadership Council recommends, in sum, an education that intentionally fosters, across multiple fields of study, wide-ranging knowledge of science, cultures, and society; high-level intellectual and practical skills; an active commitment to personal and social responsibility; and the demonstrated ability to apply learning to complex problems and challenges.
The council further calls on educators to help students become “intentional learners” who focus, across ascending levels of study and diverse academic programs, on achieving the essential learning outcomes. But to help students do this, educational communities will also have to become far more intentional themselves—both about
the kinds of learning students need, and about effective educational practices that help students learn to integrate and apply their learning.
In a society as diverse as the United States, there can be no “onesize-fits-all” design for learning that serves all students and all areas of study. The diversity that characterizes American higher education remains a source of vitality and strength.
Yet all educational institutions and all fields of study also share in a common obligation to prepare their graduates as fully as possible for the real-world demands of work, citizenship, and life in a complex and fast-changing society. In this context, there is great value in a broadly defined educational framework that provides both a shared sense of the aims of education and strong emphasis on effective practices that
help students achieve these aims.
To highlight these shared responsibilities, the council urges a new compact, between educators and American society, to adopt and achieve new Principles of Excellence (see p. 26).
Informed by a generation of innovation and by scholarly research on effective practices in teaching, learning, and curriculum, the Principles of Excellence offer both challenging standards and flexible guidance for an era of educational reform and renewal.
Taken together, the Principles of Excellence underscore the need to teach students how to integrate and apply their learning—across multiple levels of schooling and across disparate fields of study. The principles call for a far-reaching shift in the focus of schooling from accumulating course credits to building real-world capabilities.
The Seven Principles of Excellence are:
1. Aim High—and Make Excellence Inclusive
Make the Essential Learning Outcomes a Framework for the Entire Educational Experience, Connecting School, College, Work, and Life
2. Give Students a Compass
Focus Each Student’s Plan of Study on Achieving the Essential Learning Outcomes—and Assess Progress
3. Teach the Arts of Inquiry and Innovation
Immerse All Students in Analysis, Discovery, Problem Solving, and Communication, Beginning in School and Advancing in College
4. Engage the Big Questions
Teach through the Curriculum to Far-Reaching Issues—Contemporary and Enduring—in Science and Society, Cultures and Values, Global Interdependence, the Changing Economy, and Human Dignity and Freedom
5. Connect Knowledge with Choices and Action
Prepare Students for Citizenship and Work through Engaged and Guided Learning on “Real-World” Problems
6. Foster Civic, Intercultural, and Ethical Learning
Emphasize Personal and Social Responsibility, in Every Field of Study
7. Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Learning to Complex Problems
Use Assessment to Deepen Learning and to Establish a Culture of Shared Purpose and Continuous Improvement
Ongoing Partnerships and UW System liberal education initiative
· In 2005, the University of Wisconsin System entered a partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) to promote the importance of liberal education for students in Wisconsin.