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Essential Learning Outcomes

Charged in 2007, the Liberal Education Reform Team (LERT) adapted the AAC&U definition of Liberal Education for our campus: Liberal Education is a philosophy of education that empowers individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills and a strong sense of values, ethics and civic engagement. These broad goals have endured even as the courses and requirements that comprise a Liberal Education have changed over the years.

Characterized by challenging encounters with important and relevant issues today and throughout history, a Liberal Education prepares graduates both for socially valued work and for civic leadership in their society. It usually includes a general education curriculum that provides broad exposure to multiple disciplines and ways of knowing, along with more in-depth study in at least one field or area of concentration.

Original source: Advocacy "What is a liberal education?"

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World

  • Through study in fine and performing arts, humanities, mathematics and science, and social science focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring

 

Skills, Both Intellectual and Practical

  • Identification and objective evaluation of theories and assumptions
  • Critical and creative thinking
  • Written and oral communication
  • Quantitative literacy
  • Technology and information literacy
  • Teamwork, leadership and problem solving practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects and standards for performance

 

Responsibility, as Individuals and Communities

  • Knowledge of Sustainability and Its Applications
  • Civic Learning—local and global
  • Intercultural Knowledge and Competence
  • Ethical reasoning and action
  • Foundations and skills for lifelong learning developed through real-world challenges and active involvement with diverse communities

 

Learning: Integrated, Synthesized and Advanced

  • Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills and responsibilities to new settings and complex problems.

Source: Learning Outcomes are adapted from AAC&U report, College Learning for a New Global Century.