Core Commitments: Educating Students for
Personal and Social Responsibility
We invite all AAC&U member campuses to become partners in this call to action. Interested individuals can read our Call to Action brochure (pdf) for more information, and member presidents are invited to sign our pledge.
In signing, colleges and universities pledge their own leadership and best efforts in support of a far-reaching reengagement with issues of ethical and civic responsibility.
AAC&U, in turn, pledges to make both visible and influential its members’ accomplishments in fostering the ethical and civic outcomes of a contemporary liberal education. A current list of signatories is available.
A Need for Action
The entire history of American higher education is grounded in a deep commitment to educate students to become ethical and moral leaders and citizens in a diverse, interdependent world.
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 both as students in an academic community and as responsible citizens.
That commitment, while widely acknowledged in college and university mission statements, has often faltered in practice. In the face of widespread uncertainty about the academy’s appropriate role in fostering personal and social responsibility, these issues have been pushed to the edges of the college curriculum, or left mainly to individual student choice.
The Role of Colleges and Universities
Colleges and universities espouse the pursuit of excellence, integrity, and civic responsibility. Some have already taken active measures to put issues of personal and civic responsibility at the center of their educational programs, but much more needs to be done to help students embrace and achieve these high ideals.
As members of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), we believe:
- that the time is right for a far-reaching and shared commitment to reclaim and revitalize the academy’s role in fostering students’ development of personal and social responsibility.
- that such an effort should be closely tied to an encompassing and substantive vision for students’ overall learning in the college years;
- that students’ values and ethics should not be addressed in isolation from their basic responsibility as learners;
- that values, ethics, and civic responsibility should be integrally woven into the educational goals that students embrace once they make the decision to become candidates for a college degree.
At a time when our nation faces ethical and civic challenges of daunting complexity, it is crucial that we return to the core commitments of personal and social responsibility inherent in liberal education.
A true liberal education involves much more than academic growth:
- It develops a student’s personal qualities by cultivating curiosity about new ideas and differing views, honing the discipline to follow intellectual methods to conclusions, strengthening the capacity to accept criticism, increasing tolerance for ambiguity, and fostering commitment to the imperative for honesty.
- It also involves developing a student’s sense of collective responsibility by helping students learn how to understand the world from others’ perspectives—that fundamental capacity that can lead to the recognition and resolution of moral conflict and the resolve to work with others for a greater public good.
The Core Commitments Pledge
We, the college and university presidents who sign this call to action, pledge to provide new leadership to reestablish education for personal and social responsibility as a central goal within American colleges and universities.
In partnership with AAC&U’s Core Commitments initiative, we pledge to give particular attention to the following dimensions of personal and social responsibility:
- Striving for excellence
- Cultivating personal and academic integrity
- Contributing to a larger community
- Taking seriously the perspectives of others
- Developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning
While these five dimensions do not encompass all aspects of conscience and citizenship, they offer a compelling claim as the initial focus for a widespread reengagement with campus values and ethics. Each of these five shared responsibilities is already widely espoused across the academy.
If students are to become accountable for pursuing excellence, integrity, and responsibility, we as campus leaders must also become more intentional and effective in articulating these expectations for student learning, in creating ongoing opportunities for students to engage and address them, in assessing how well they are acquiring these capacities, and in learning—together as an academic enterprise—from our shared progress.
We will work as a community toward these ends.
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