Core Commitments: Educating Students for
Personal and Social Responsibility

Background

While the commitment to educate students to be ethical and moral leaders, workers, and citizens is grounded in the history of American higher education and is today centrally acknowledged in college and university mission statements, it has faltered in practice.

In the face of widespread uncertainty about the academy’s appropriate role in examining values and beliefs, issues of personal and social responsibility have been pushed to the edges of the college curriculum and addressed in only limited ways in the co-curriculum.

As a result, many students:

• Experience a disconnect between their academic studies and the personal exploration that inevitably occurs in college;
• Are left to their own devices to address personal and interpersonal concerns as well as moral and ethical challenges;
• Receive few opportunities to place those experiences in a larger context of history, culture, and society.

Existing campus structures—as in the case where there is little collaboration between academic and student affairs—can also reinforce the divide and work against a collective institutional commitment to students’ pursuit of excellence, integrity, and strong sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. 

Yet college can and should be a time when students make a commitment to reach for excellence in the use of their talents, take responsibility for the integrity and quality of their work, and engage in meaningful practices that prepare them to fulfill their obligations as students in an academic community and as responsible global and local citizens.

AAC&U believes the time is right to reclaim and revitalize the academy’s role in fostering students’ development of personal and social responsibility.

The Core Commitments Call for Proposals deadline was December 15, 2006. Please visit the Leadership Consoritum page to learn about project activities of selected institutions. Please also visit the presidents' Call to Action and Resources page for ways to get involved with Core Commitments.