Give Students a Compass: College Learning, General Education and Student Success

Give Students a Compass: College Learning, General Education and Student Success is a multi-state collaborative to re-map educational aims, educational practices, and assessment strategies for general education in three public state systems: the California State University System and the state higher education systems of Oregon and Wisconsin. 

The project is part of AAC&U’s signature initiative, Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP), which fosters campus action, public advocacy, and useful evidence to make the aims and outcomes of liberal education a guiding framework for all students’ educational achievement—in professional and arts and sciences fields alike.  The title of this project, Give Students a Compass, is taken directly from a set of new Principles of Excellence described in LEAP’s influential report, College Learning for the New Global Century. (pdf)

What's New

OUS ANNOUNCES COMPASS PARTICIPATION
The Oregon University System announced on July 28, 2008, its participation in AAC&U's new project, Give Students a Compass: A Multi-State Partnership for College Learning, General Education, and Underserved Student Success. Along with the University of Wisconsin System and the California State University System, OUS will use the Compass Project to further its ongoing strategic goal of advancing the complex issue of student learning outcomes and meaningful assessment within its undergraduate education program.

CSU ANNOUNCES NEW GEN ED REQUIREMENTS
The California State University System announced on July 1, 2008, its decision to establish new general education requirements based on the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes.

The project will support public higher education and faculty-driven reform efforts designed to strengthen the quality of student learning on campuses within each system. The broad goals of the project address AAC&U’s priority to “Aim High —Make Excellence Inclusive articulated in its recent Strategic Plan. This priority focuses on building campus capacity to realize their commitment to students historically underserved—first-generation students, racial and ethnic minority students, and those from low-income families.  The essential learning outcomes of LEAP are thus intentionally placed for all students to achieve through general and liberal education.  Compass partnerships are designed to work in multiple directions within state systems—bottom up, top down, inside out, and outside in.  Communication among the partner systems will encourage exchange and growth—and promising practices will be shared widely

Key Questions:

1. How can state systems become generative catalysts for change supported at the campus level?
2. How can general education be redesigned in ways that raise the levels of underserved student success within large systems?
3. How can general education become a catalyst for helping students achieve the LEAP “essential learning outcomes?” What new design principles should be applied?

Through the Compass national project, AAC&U members are poised to lead a next generation of work on the design and practice of general education.  Just as the Greater Expectations project (2000-2006) set the course for LEAP, this project moves us along a path toward excellence for all as a nation goes to college.  Looking ahead, we see students in the Compass project navigating from college forward into their new global century. The Compass project tests our collective capacity to respond to these challenges.

This initiative is funded by Carnegie Corporation, State Farm, and the participating partners, the Compass project.