The University Studies Program (USP) provides students with an assessable, common intellectual experience that also embraces the traditional breadth of a liberal arts education to prepare them for the challenges of work, for engaged citizenship and for a meaningful and satisfying life. These experiences will derive from participation in small learning communities, civic engagement and more.
Student learning is the focus of the 41-credit program. In addition to the broad exploration of knowledge and the development of essential skills, students will ask big questions related to three themes drawn from the Essential Learning Outcomes:
These areas of inquiry relate to our campus' distinctive initiatives and are phrased in the form of Signature Questions:
Explore
The exploration component is designed to provide students with a broad understanding of the human experience through different disciplinary ways of knowing about nature, culture and society.
Question
The question component is designed to promote students' development of the foundational skills necessary to succeed at the University, an understanding of and engagement with the Signature Questions, and an awareness of the value and importance of a liberal education. Students participate in small learning communities, as disciplinary courses are paired with writing and speaking courses in the first two semesters. In the third portion of this sequence, students participate in a community engagement project.
Connect
The connection component is designed for students to integrate and synthesize knowledge from their Quest and Explore experiences in an advanced writing course that synthesizes all three Signature Questions.
Through coordinated learning experiences, students explore their responsibilities as educated citizens in today’s world. The skills, knowledge and responsibilities that are the focus of USP student learning are drawn from the UW Oshkosh Essential Learning Outcomes.
As a community of scholars, the USP faculty and staff are committed to students' academic success, the value of a liberal education and the implementation of research-based teaching and learning practices.
]]>These instructors need to be able to:
If you have any questions or problems, feel free to email USP at usp@uwosh.edu.
]]>The PKAL Summer Leadership Institute is designed for both early and mid-career STEM faculty engaged in efforts related to transforming undergraduate STEM education in their classrooms, departments, and institutions. The five-day intensive Institute provides faculty participants with the theory and practice required to act as agents of change in their home institutions or professional societies. Held in the heart of the Rocky Mountains on the Baca Campus of Colorado College in Crestone, Colorado, PKAL has been offering Summer Leadership Institutes since 1996. Since then, over 40 percent of Institute alumni have achieved positions of leadership at their home campuses.
The Institute is designed around a carefully coordinated blend of theory, practice, and discussion of the politics of change and other issues of national relevance to higher education. A team of six mentors plays a key role in guiding the Institute, contributing first-hand experience in institutional change leadership at the local and national levels. Mentors work with participants during the Institute to shape a personal agenda for leadership, and to help participants conceptualize how they can implement an institutional change action plan at their institutions.
If you are an early or mid-career STEM faculty member, we invite you to apply for this Institute. Alternatively, if you are a campus administrator please consider sponsoring the application of an emerging STEM leader at your campus. Many of our participant campuses have supported several members of the faculty and are thus building a team of STEM leaders ready to implement more effective and inclusive institutional transformation.
Applications are due on March 27, 2013. For more information on the application process, click here.
To learn more about PKAL, please visit www.aacu.org/pkal, e-mail us at pkal@aacu.org, or call us at 202.884.7439.
]]>Those are the pillars of distinction upon which the University and UW Oshkosh Chancellor Richard Wells are unveiling the 2011-2012 Strategic Plan Update and Annual Report to the full UW System Board of Regents on Thursday, Feb. 7.
The newly published and accessible report is also now available online. You can see Chancellor Wells’ presentation to the full Board of Regents from 11 a.m. to Noon Thursday HERE. Chancellor Wells will also lead a UW Oshkosh open campus forum on the new strategic plan update and annual report, including an update on Gov. Scott Walker’s Feb. 20 state budget address and proposal, the week of Feb. 25. That forum’s date, time and location will be shared with the campus community when details are finalized.
"This campus community’s teaching, learning and research mission, and the 13,500 students, 1,700 staff and the more-than 80,000 alumni united in it, are the embodiment of an educational, socio-cultural and economic engine,” Wells states in his opening message within the new plan update and report. “Together, we serve as a catalyst in community collaborations with public and private partners that not only improve the city, region and state but also annually supply it with thousands of well-prepared, career-ready graduates who have started giving back even before they have earned their degrees.”
The report, released today, www.uwosh.edu/strategicplan, features updates, action initiatives and activities of the major units of UW Oshkosh. Among the standout accomplishments and highlights:
UW Oshkosh is a national leader in sustainability.
“With every day, the UW Oshkosh campus community finds new and deeper ways to plug into renewable energy and improve operational efficiency, driving the institution further toward carbon neutrality and the ultimate educational effectiveness and value,” Wells said. “While the University makes greater strides toward sustainability, the knowledge gained is shared with University our neighbors, be they city halls or Wisconsin family farms."
UW Oshkosh has taken a pioneering position in the transformation of general education.
Our University Studies Program, a new future for general education, prescribes small learning communities, student-on-student peer mentoring, alumni mentoring and an array of high-impact courses that dovetail with the signature questions a 21st Century student must explore.
The program is built upon better learning and better teaching. Students will question, explore and connect. They will examine the ways to create a more sustainable world, the means of bridging cultural divides and the collaborative work necessary for a life of civic engagement.
Cities thrive when community partners identify problems, band together and find solutions. There may be no better example of it than in the teamwork demonstrated by the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation, UW Oshkosh Foundation, two regional hoteliers and the Oshkosh Common Council and its city taxpayers, who got behind the shared effort and investment to resurrect their downtown’s struggling riverfront hotel.
Additional UW Oshkosh highlights and data are available for review at the University’s comprehensive Strategic Plan Update and Annual Report for 2011–2012: uwosh.edu/strategicplan.
“UW Oshkosh and the UW System institutions, without a doubt, in so many ways, are knowledge-power sources like no other,” Wells said.
Find more UW Oshkosh news at uwosh.edu/today or follow @UWOshkoshToday on Twitter.
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