Core Commitments: Educating Students for
Personal and Social Responsibility

If students are to be more 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.

Leadership Consortium

Twenty-three institutions from across all sectors of higher education comprise the Core Commitments Leadership Consortium, which is designed to bring together the most promising institutional practices related to educating students for personal and social responsibility as well as to deepen and extend these efforts.

Chosen on the basis of work already accomplished and on an articulated plan to deepen and extend that work, these institutions were selected from a pool of more than 125 applicants in 2007. For more information about the Consortium selection, please see the press releases for April 10, 2007, January 18, 2007, and April 17, 2008.

The Leadership Consortium members are:

Allegheny College, Pennsylvania
Babson College, Massachusetts
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
California State University, Northridge, California
Concordia College – Moorhead, Minnesota
Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania
Miami University, Ohio
Michigan State University, Michigan
Middlesex Community College, Massachusetts
Oakland Community College, Michigan
Portland State University, Oregon
Rollins College, Florida
Sacred Heart University, Connecticut
Saint Anselm College, New Hampshire
Saint Mary’s College of California, California
St. Lawrence University, New York
United States Air Force Academy, Colorado
United States Military Academy, New York
University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama
University of Central Florida, Florida
University of the Pacific, California
Wagner College, New York
Winthrop University, South Carolina

As part of the Consortium's efforts, campus leadership teams administered the new Personal and Social Responsibility Institutional Inventory in the fall of 2007 to students, faculty, student affairs administrators, and academic administrators. The inventory is designed to identify where different groups on campus see opportunities to foster learning about personal and social responsibility and to serve as a catalyst for dialogues across the institution about ways to make such learning more pervasive. Pre- and post-inventory dialogues are scheduled for each of the Leadership Consortium institutions.

Eventually the Leadership Consortium members will also be assessing whether students have acquired new capabilities in the five dimensions. Future project activities planned for the initiative include institutes, workshops, and symposia.

Allegheny College

Meadville, Pennsylvania
Affiliation: Independent
Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate Liberal Arts
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 2,068

Overview
Allegheny College promotes many of the Core Commitments described by AAC&U, as evidenced by the College’s mission statement and the goals of our current strategic plan. We offer a wide variety of programs supporting a vision of undergraduate learning rooted in academic rigor, civic engagement, and the development of integrity. Each of these programs reflect the centrality of personal and social responsibility to the mission of the College. Allegheny enjoys a culture of cooperation and collaboration that has brought forth an astounding variety of innovative centers and programs dedicated to fostering ethical behavior. A core group of faculty, administrators, students and community members have been working with great dedication and persistence to teach civic responsibility and personal integrity for over a decade.

Goals
While Allegheny’s past and current efforts demonstrate solid institutional commitment to all five dimensions of the Core Commitments, additional work is needed to create a more seamless connection between the values embodied in the commitments and existing programs. We will utilize small group dialogues to identify opportunities for expanding, enhancing, and integrating Core Commitment initiatives on campus and with our community partners. Five Civic Engagement Student Fellows will collaborate with the project team to engage their peers in examining the dynamics of personal and social integrity and responsible citizenship. In the end we hope to have developed the necessary structures to coordinate and integrate the existing civic engagement and service learning initiatives into a shared vision for social and personal responsibility.

Babson College

Babson Park, Massachusetts
Affiliation: Independent
Carnegie Classification: Business
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 1800, Master’s: 1200

Overview
Babson College has made the ethical, civic, and moral development of our students an integral part of our strategy, our vision, and our articulated desired learning outcomes for our curricular and co-curricular activities. Our past and current efforts are focused on fostering a campus climate that embraces these principles. Babson has integrated key dimensions of the Core Commitments initiative into the curriculum, thus impacting every student on campus. Students receive exposure to ethical issues and the role of business in society in our first year seminar, in our arts and humanities foundation, and in several other parts of the curriculum and co-curriculum.

Goals
Our future efforts include improving processes and developing programs on our campus, and organizing a student forum for all of the Leadership Consortium members. Babson College is also engaged in several high-profile activities to help educate students for personal and social responsibility, such as our partnership with the Posse Foundation, our work with national experts on developing an honor code, our Bernon Center for Public Service, our ethics case development made possible with support from the Geneen Foundation, our development of a center for social entrepreneurship, and many other programs and activities that have had a broad impact on the campus climate.

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, Ohio
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral/Research Intensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 16,925, Master’s: 1,871, Doctoral: 608

Overview
Building on foundations laid more than ten years ago, Bowling Green State University remains committed to its vision of educating students who are prepared to make thoughtful judgments about difficult moral and ethical issues, engage meaningfully in their communities, and become responsible citizens. Our efforts revolve around our values initiative, the BGeXperience (BGeX), and our engagement initiative, with its focus on community involvement and service learning. BGeX, begun in 2002, involves all first year students in intensive academic experiences focused on critical thinking about values. This unique program encourages them to reflect on their values, understand those of others, and to negotiate difficult value conflicts they will confront as citizens and professionals. Our engagement initiative helps students put this training into practice, combining their investigation of values with experience working on projects of importance to the surrounding community. These programs have fostered collaboration among faculty, student affairs staff, students, and many other members of our institution and community.

Goals
Involvement in Core Commitments will allow the University to expand these programs, further integrate them into college and major curricula as well as co-curricular activities, foster even deeper collaboration between student and academic affairs, and facilitate the creation of new courses and learning opportunities.

California State University, Northridge

Northridge, California
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Master’s 1–Comprehensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 26,854, Master’s: 6,389

Overview
California State University, Northridge (CSUN) has a significant track record in promoting the personal and social responsibility of its 33,000 students as part of its commitment to the public purposes of higher education and its critical role in preparing students for lives as ethical, committed and engaged participants in a democratic society. 

Goals
Our goal for participation in Core Commitments is to identify our institutional baseline and provide ways to determine if our three-pronged plan to advance AAC&U’s Core Commitments is comprised of best practices. CSUN proposes to design, implement and assess new curricular components for two required courses for all freshmen and to create a new certificate of achievement program that will motivate students to take fifteen units of service learning courses or approved community service projects during their undergraduate experience. 

Concordia College – Moorhead

Moorhead, Minnesota
Affiliation: Religious (ELCA Lutheran)
Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate Liberal Arts
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 2,725, Master’s: 20

Overview
Participation in the Core Commitments Leadership Consortium comes at an opportune moment in Concordia College’s history. Last year, Concordia adopted a new core curriculum for the first time in thirty years. This new curriculum is far more than a variation in the sequence of required core courses. It is an intentional rethinking of the nature of the liberal arts and our obligations to our students’ intellectual and moral development. The theme of our new core—“responsible engagement in the world”—illustrates the strong connection between Concordia’s educational vision and AAC&U’s five dimensions of personal and social responsibility.

Goals
Concordia's challenge now is to successfully bridge the gaps between this integrative vision and our practice. To address this challenge, we will create a broad-based task force charged with monitoring and evaluating the implementation and assessment of the new core. Secondly, we will meld our academic and student affairs efforts by expanding our LeadNow program, which promotes student leadership and service while fostering intercultural awareness. Finally, we will strengthen our efforts to teach and mentor our students as whole persons by intentionally addressing transitional issues, coordinating student service efforts, and initiating campus-wide discussions about student learning and student life issues.

Elizabethtown College

Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania
Affiliation: Independent
Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate General
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 1,974, Master’s: 17

Overview
Molded by the mission of “Educate for Service,” Elizabethtown College, a small comprehensive college in Pennsylvania, emphasizes relationship-centered learning, international and cross-cultural understanding, and experiential learning. The Strategic Vision of the College, developed during a two-year planning process, calls for renewed efforts in 2007-2008 to prepare students for lives of purpose as citizens, leaders and professionals. 

Goals
The Core Commitments Initiative will facilitate the implementation of the Strategic Vision, especially in the area identified in the Strategic Vision document as “Purposeful Life Work.” As participants in the Core Commitments project, we plan to develop a year-long program for first-year students that will emphasize the development of personal and social responsibility. We also plan to hold campus-wide dialogues and programs with the goal of creating a shared commitment on campus to deepening students’ personal and social responsibility and developing institutional goals. The team will also consider the development of an electronic portfolio requirement. The portfolio might include entries and artifacts relating to students’ moral reasoning and growth, as well as self-discovery, relationships, diversity, service and leadership, intellectual growth, and future plans. 

Miami University – Ohio

Oxford, Ohio
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral Intensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 14,643, Master’s & Doctoral: 1,695

Overview
Miami University has a commitment to instilling academic integrity in its students. In 2005, the University administration formed a committee to assess the current state of academic integrity at Miami and provide recommendations of practices that would help to promote it. After participating in a national survey, conducting focus groups, and reviewing scholarly literature, the committee recommended strengthening the ways in which the University communicates its expectations of academic integrity, with one of its recommendations being that the University develops online instruction in academic integrity issues.

Goals
As part of the Core Commitments initiative, Miami University is developing an online learning module focusing on academic integrity and ethical use of intellectual property. Satisfactory participation of this module will be required for all first-year students. This project, “Be Miami: An Infrastructure for Cultivating a Responsible and Intellectual College Life,” will enhance and extend the University’s academic integrity initiatives to an integrated infrastructure to foster a progressive education on integrity and its practice in students’ academic lives as well as their lives outside of the classroom.

Michigan State University

East Lansing, Michigan
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral/Research Extensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 35,821, Master’s & Doctoral: 9214

Overview
Michigan State University is publicly committed to fostering responsible citizenship among its faculty and students. Concrete evidence of the achievement and depth of these commitments can be found in the many outreach, service-learning, and civic engagement programs in which MSU faculty and students participate. MSU also has recently been identified as an engaged university on all criteria in the new Carnegie classification system. Through this project, we will explore new and compelling ways to enact our commitment to engagement while deepening our understanding of ways to promote personal and social responsibility in the lives of our students and our institution.

Goals
A 21st-century Chautauqua will become the model for building a culture of responsibility within the living and learning residential programs at MSU that can be assessed and extended to the larger university. A collaborative campus dialogue, or Chautauqua, will be created, beginning in the three degree-granting residential college programs and traveling throughout the campus. These dialogues among faculty, students, staff, and guests will focus on concrete issues such as environmental change, the political process, social justice, war and peace, and artistic freedom of expression. The first goal is to raise questions about personal, social, and institutional responsibility through dialogues on these issues. The second goal is to develop new service learning, field experience, internship, civic engagement, and study abroad and away program courses that are cross-listed and team taught by faculty from among the three residential college programs. These courses will address these issues and the larger subject of responsibility. This work will include a new trans-college capstone course, first piloted as a seminar and then gradually extended to students outside the three degree-granting residential colleges. The capstone will mix students from different programs to study the multi-dimensionality of professional and civic responsibility.

Middlesex Community College

Bedford, Massachusetts
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Associate Only
Enrollment: 8,008

Overview
Middlesex Community College (MCC) has established a college-wide commitment to the development of personal and social responsibility that begins with our mission and strategic plan and extends through a range of academic, professional development, leadership and planning initiatives. Participating in Core Commitments provides the opportunity to establish a leadership team that brings together key personnel and faculty to engage in a national dialogue to share our current initiatives as well as to gain resources for improving our existing efforts.

Goals
Through participation in Core Commitments, MCC can identify and leverage resources to assist faculty and staff in integrating the concepts of personal and social responsibility more widely in both courses and co-curricular activities, as well as in service learning and civic engagement projects. MCC will pilot two integrated learning communities to study personal and social responsibility from a thematic perspective. The institutional-level change envisioned will include creating a campus climate that is openly supportive and respectful of differences among others and demonstrates a high level of civility. This will be assisted by the creation of regularly scheduled open dialogues across the college community and implementation of a college-wide program that recognizes faculty, staff and students who demonstrate social and personal responsibility.

Oakland Community College

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Associate Only
Enrollment: 46,579

Overview
As the largest community college in Michigan and the eighth largest in the country, Oakland Community College serves nearly 47,000 students in its five campuses. Since one-third of U.S. automotive manufacturing occurs within 70 miles of the county, the college is uniquely positioned to observe at first hand the effects of job outsourcing and globalization. The challenges of developing a culture of excellence along with an ethic of service and civic participation are significant in our transitioning economy. 

Goals
We will work to develop consensus regarding the exact nature and the “teachability” of these particular core attributes, identify and deploy more precise assessment instruments, and the gain wider acknowledgment of the college’s successes in the infusion of core values. Oakland Community College will bring tried and tested ideas for implementation to the Core Commitments Consortium, and it eagerly looks forward to gaining new ideas and strategies from partner institutions.

Portland State University

Portland, Oregon
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral/Research Extensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 18,000, Master’s: 4,050, Doctoral: 542

Overview
The motto of Portland State University (PSU) is “Let Knowledge Serve the City.” As this motto implies, personal and social responsibility are at the core of the institution. PSU is a well-recognized national leader in general education reform, community-based learning, and civic engagement. PSU’s investments in curricular and institutional reform are paying off; yet, PSU’s efforts are incomplete and the general education program remains imperfect, especially in the junior year. Additionally, nascent efforts to more fully integrate student affairs professionals into the academic fabric of the institution remain on the margins of core university activities. For these reasons and more, the timing is perfect for PSU to participate in AAC&U’s Core Commitments program. 

Goals
AAC&U’s program at PSU will significantly enhance recognized deficiencies at the junior level of the general education program and inspire and sustain new relationships between faculty and student affairs professionals. PSU will intentionally expand its proven faculty/staff learning community model for professional development (the AIM mini-grant program) to explicitly address the five AAC&U dimensions for student personal and social responsibility. PSU’s initiative will intentionally pair strategic faculty who focus on the junior-level general education courses with student affairs professionals to directly enhance personal and social responsibility learning outcomes for students.

Rollins College

Winter Park, Florida
Affiliation: Independent
Carnegie Classification: Master’s 1–Comprehensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 2,744, Master’s: 734

Overview
Since its groundbreaking 1931 curriculum conference chaired by John Dewey, Rollins College has committed itself to offering pragmatic or practical liberal education, and developing good citizens. As part of its recent, successful reaccreditation process, the college adopted an ambitious quality enhancement plan focusing on leadership and citizenship, academic and social integrity, and diversity. Rollins also adopted the mission, “educating for global citizenship and responsible leadership”—both elements deeply committed to emphasizing the core responsibilities. While we have had a values and decision making requirement for over twenty-five years, and have developed a recognized program in community engagement, Rollins College wants to expand and make our programs more coherent and developmental.

Goals
Rollins College major goals include a curriculum revision aimed at developing a seamless and developmental learning plan for students, and new academic and student affairs deans whose top priority is student learning create the unique opportunity at Rollins to develop an innovative citizenship program in the tradition of practical liberal education. Initiatives such as the Purposeful Life program will help students develop a striving for excellence, while a new social honor code and a Greek initiative will help them cultivate integrity.  Incorporating our values requirement into service learning will help students develop competencies in ethical and moral reasoning as well as increase their sense of contributing to a larger community. Finally, expanding our living–learning communities in intentional ways will further help students take the perspectives of others.

Sacred Heart University

Fairfield, Connecticut
Affiliation: Religious
Carnegie Classification: Master’s 2–Comprehensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 4,190, Master’s: 1,585

Overview
Sacred Heart University is a co-educational, liberal arts, comprehensive institution rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Founded in 1963, Sacred Heart University is the second largest Catholic University in New England and was the first in America to be led by lay people. Since 1988, the University has worked steadily and intentionally to define and develop its identity as a Catholic university educating men and women of knowledge, faith, compassion and integrity, who have a keen sense of their social and ethical responsibility in a global world. This vision for undergraduate learning is imprinted in the University’s Mission Statement. It is expressed in the newly designed Core Curriculum, Common Core: The Human Journey, which weaves liberal learning with values and ethics. It is also evident in the Student Life Freshman Mentor program, which works to “ensure that the learning process at Sacred Heart University extends outside of the classroom.” 

Goals
Sacred Heart University has a desire and a commitment to extend its vision for undergraduate learning by developing and implementing a university infrastructure and culture that would connect the undergraduate core curriculum, most particularly its Common Core, and student life more broadly, beginning with the freshmen mentor program and to integrate, within both, the five dimensions of personal and social responsibility. With this structure implemented at the freshman level, our goal then would be to integrate the five dimensions throughout the curriculum and co-curriculum across the university.

Saint Anselm College

Manchester, New Hampshire
Affiliation: Religious
Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate Liberal Arts
Enrollment: 1,945

Overview
Learning Liberty at Saint Anselm College began as a campus-wide initiative in the fall of 2003. It was conceived as a response to two concerns facing higher education. One is a political and moral concern for the education of engaged and active citizens; the other is an intellectual and spiritual concern for developing the curiosity and understanding that constitute liberty of the mind. To address these concerns, over the last three years the Learning Liberty Initiative has proceeded along three paths, which we describe as Curriculum and Pedagogy, Campus Life and Engagement, and Student Voice. These three paths describe a reinvigorated approach to Saint Anselm’s traditional mission as a Catholic liberal arts college in the Benedictine tradition.

Goals
Goals for Curriculum and Pedagogy include a week-long, interdisciplinary faculty seminar, Education for Liberty, faculty discussions aimed at developing concrete curricular changes (fall 2007), and a series of faculty presentations on education, liberty and civic life. Goals for Campus Life and Engagement include promoting Benedictine stewardship of the environment; incorporating academic and service components into student-led communities; and inviting students to organize Civic Engagement Workshops led by campus and community leaders. Goals for Student Voice include establishing essay contests focusing on the intersection of politics and higher learning; establishing a Special Assembly Forum to formalize procedures for students, faculty, and staff to discuss events of immediate significance; and creating a student-administered Honors Code.

Saint Mary’s College of California

Moraga, California
Affiliation: Religious
Carnegie Classification: Master’s 1–Comprehensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 2,525, Master’s: 1,083, Doctoral: 58

Overview
Saint Mary’s College of California is a liberal arts, Catholic, and Lasallian Christian Brothers institution in the tradition of Saint John Baptist De La Salle, patron saint of teachers, who started the order for the sake of teaching the poor in France in the 17th Century. Our mission states our aim “to create a student-centered educational community whose members support one another with mutual understanding and respect.” As noted in the mission statement, “a distinctive mark of a Lasallian school is its awareness of the consequences of economic and social injustice and its commitment to the poor.”

Goals
With the Core Commitments initiative, Saint Mary’s College will bring its many ongoing initiatives toward responsible citizenship, social justice and personal integrity to the next plateau. After years of strategically moving in this direction, we want to deepen, widen and strengthen these initiatives and integrate them under and within a larger campus-wide infrastructure. This will be done on three levels. Community leadership/student engagement will engage students in campus-wide dialogue on social responsibility and civic engagement, and, based on these dialogues and the goals they outline, support student-driven action plans. Curriculum development will expand existing social justice/community involvement programs across the curriculum and offer incentives for faculty to add social justice content to their courses in areas and schools where they are underrepresented. In order to develop new institutional strategies and assessment, we will use consultants and the Core Commitments project and PSRI Inventory to measure how well our vision of student engagement and social justice is reflected in both the curriculum and co-curriculum. Connected to this last level of work and to our core curriculum review, the leadership team, the social justice coordinating committee, the core curriculum task force, and other stake holders will work on strategies for continuous improvement.

St. Lawrence University

Canton, New York
Affiliation: Independent
Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate Colleges–Arts & Sciences
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 2,182, Master’s: 123

Overview
Woven throughout the institutional objectives of St. Lawrence University is language that stresses the development of students’ personal and social responsibility. This commitment to deepening students’ sense of appreciation for and responsibility to others is embodied through our recognized academic strengths in global and intercultural studies, residential education, civic engagement, and leadership. Our objectives do not speak, however, to the ethical responsibility of each citizen to protect and promote democratic principles, equality, and social justice, and they fail to foster an expectation that students will develop a commitment to creating a more equitable world.

Goals
St. Lawrence seeks to extend our institutional identity to include greater attention to values and to citizens’ responsibilities for active participation in social change. To do so, we propose to integrate our multicultural initiatives and education for citizenship, leadership, and democracy through a new center for diversity and social justice, bridging academic and student affairs. We will offer three community-wide deliberative dialogues, each of which will consist of a series of dialogue sessions over the course of one semester. These will help us assess how well our institutional mission espouses engagement with issues of personal and social responsibility as well as model the plural democratic praxis we seek to foster. The dialogues will take place within the context of our re-accreditation self-study and the creation of an institutional assessment plan in which we are scrutinizing our mission, aims and objectives.

United States Air Force Academy

Colorado
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate–General
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 4,400

Overview
The Academy’s vision is to be the Air Force’s premier institution for developing leaders of character.  Fundamental to life at the Air Force Academy are the Air Force core values of “integrity first,” “service before self,” and “excellence in all we do.” These values are remarkably similar to the first three Core Commitments dimensions of personal and social responsibility. This fall, we took the bold step of performing a comprehensive revision of our institutional learning outcomes. Included in these new outcomes are several that are well-aligned with the remaining Core Commitments dimensions of “Taking seriously the perspectives of others” and “Ethical reasoning and action.” Together, these ideas highlight our institutional commitment to the development of personal and social responsibility.

Goals
The Air Force Academy is eager to engage in conversations regarding personal and social responsibility, and look forward to learning from others in the consortium. As a result of these conversations, we hope to  enhance our own efforts to articulate the knowledge, skills, and responsibilities that serve as the basis for personal and social responsibility; provide learning experiences that effectively promote these knowledge, skills, and responsibilities; and develop assessment and feedback mechanisms to ensure continuous improvement. As we work through these processes, we will contribute what we learn to the national conversations on these important topics.

United States Military Academy

West Point, New York
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Baccalaureate Liberal Arts
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 4,358

Overview
The mission of the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point is "to educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army."  Since its founding two centuries ago, the Military Academy has accomplished its mission by developing cadets in four critical areas: intellectual, physical, military, and moral-ethical - a four-year process called the "West Point Experience." Specific developmental goals are addressed through several fully coordinated and integrated programs.

Goals
USMA’s cadet development model, the Cadet Leader Development System (CLDS) has become an integral part of the USMA vernacular, and the academy has gone to great lengths to integrate the plan across all three resourced USMA programs (academic, military, and physical). However, key shortfalls exist with regard to the current effectiveness in assessing success of our character development programs in both our cadets and graduates. USMA has formed special committees to tackle the assessment process in order to improve CLDS and better develop USMA leaders. Another significant shortfall that USMA is attempting to address is how we educate and reinforce the staff and faculty in the professional military ethics education (PME2) program when nearly one-third of the staff and faculty rotate annually (i.e., leave USMA and return to positions throughout the Army). This faculty turnover creates a unique challenge that we are diligently striving to improve upon. The potential key to success may be consistent, well thought-out, faculty development sessions that generate reflection and enable personal character growth.

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Birmingham, Alabama
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral/Research Extensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 11,470, Master’s: 2,381, Doctoral: 1,124

Overview
A year ago, the Ford Foundation awarded the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) a highly competitive Difficult Dialogues grant. The award recognized that the quality enhancement plan (QEP) that UAB developed for its SACS reaccreditation is a comprehensive, effective program that integrates academic instruction with instruction in diversity, respect for others, responsible dialogue, and ethical behavior. Beginning with a shared vision for a UAB graduate, the QEP reminds the campus community that all units must function synergistically to fulfill our mission to prepare students for life, not just a career. UAB holds itself accountable for introducing, reinforcing, practicing, and assessing three competencies targeted for initial enhancement: writing, quantitative literacy, and ethics and civic responsibility. Thus, UAB undertakes to integrate academic instruction and cumulative experience in personal and social responsibility throughout students’ undergraduate years.

Goals
At UAB academic affairs and student affairs have collaboratively implemented a two-part freshman year experience that introduces the thinking, learning, dialoguing, and decision-making skills that are expected of university students. The UAB discussion book initiative and freshman learning communities comprise this gateway experience. Becoming an engaged, responsible student in class and on campus is a first step towards becoming a responsible citizen of the state, nation, and international community. Supplemental to these efforts, cumulative instruction and progressively challenging experiences in personal and social responsibility will be integrated into mid-level courses in every major. Finally, every major is developing a capstone experience that synthesizes what seniors have learned and helps prepare them for professional, personal, and civic responsibilities.

University of Central Florida

Orlando, Florida
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral/Research Intensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 39,545, Master’s: 4,382, Doctoral: 1,535

Overview
University of Central Florida (UCF), a metropolitan research university with more than 47,000 students, currently demonstrates significant activity in the five dimensions of personal and social responsibility. UCF is uniquely situated to contribute to research and teaching at the intersections of ethics and education aimed at developing programs and disseminating information on projects through workshops, publications, and community outreach. In any large university, a pressing concern is the ability to create a sense of personal and social responsibility among students and faculty and with the broader community. UCF does this through its commitments to academic integrity and to being America’s leading partnership university. UCF is dedicated to development and promotion of a common core of ideals, activities, and programs that are able to bridge the individual/community divide pervading large metropolitan institutions.

Goals
UCF's development goals involve creating an innovative and exciting new research initiative to teach ethical principles and study ethical decision-making in interactive IPL/Story Box scenarios; creating department and college-level ethics task force committees to complement the university ethics task force; offering faculty development seminars to create progressive course content for Core Commitments; extending our existing academic integrity seminar as a proactive strategy to enhance and encourage academic honesty among students; and expanding participation in ethics bowl competitions among students in on-campus and regional venues to enhance and improve ethics education for personal and social responsibility.

University of the Pacific

Stockton, California
Affiliation: Independent
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral/Research Intensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 3,535, Master’s: 379, Doctoral: 205, First-Professional: 2132

Overview
The University of the Pacific, a doctoral university with an undergraduate core, graduate programs, and three large professional schools, offers programs on three campuses in Northern California: San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton. Pacific is complex—housing nine academic colleges and schools—yet small, enrolling only 6,300 students. AAC&U’s Core Commitments initiative comes at an opportune moment for Pacific. As a result of an extensive three-year discussion, Pacific has produced a new strategic plan, Pacific Rising 2008-2015, that reflects a fundamental commitment to promoting the goals of personal and social responsibility. Three of the six core values at Pacific are “whole person education,” “responsible leadership,” and “community engagement.” Pacific named six commitments for action: innovation, collaboration, distinctiveness, whole-student, partnerships, and improvement.

Goals
In the context of Pacific Rising, there are now six new university-wide initiatives underway that will directly address, in varying degrees, all five dimensions of personal and social responsibility: the three Pacific Seminars, the electronic portfolio, the Carnegie CASTL Leadership membership on “affective learning,” the study of how emotional intelligence competencies might be integrated more intentionally and widely in the curriculum and co-curriculum and in admissions, the first year experience committee, and a new student life model. Our overarching goal is to implement and coordinate these initiatives in order to develop a systematic, synthetic and compelling approach to developing students’ ethical understanding and principled civic action during the entire course of their education at Pacific.

Wagner College

Staten Island, New York
Affiliation: Independent
Carnegie Classification: Master’s 1–Comprehensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 2,000, Master’s: 300

Overview
Wagner College is a four year liberal arts college serving approximately 2,000 undergraduate students and 300 graduate students. Wagner offers a comprehensive educational program that is anchored in the liberal arts, experiential and co-curricular learning, interculturalism, interdisciplinary studies, and service to society that is cultivated by a faculty dedicated to promoting individual expression, reflective practice, and integrative learning. Our mission is to prepare students for a meaningful life, as well as for successful careers, by emphasizing scholarship, achievement, leadership, and citizenship.

Goals
Wagner College seeks to remove any disconnect between students' academic studies and their personal exploration, and support personal excellence, integrity, and strong sense of responsibility. Wagner College emphasizes ethical development and civic engagement through learning communities - first year program (FYP), intermediate learning communities (ILC) and senior learning communities (SLC), co-curricular activities, and campus policies. Consortium membership will provide a forum through which to discuss further program expansion. Wagner will also broaden the impact of two new grant-funded programs, the Civic Innovations Program and Critical Thinking for Civic Thinking in Science (CT)2, thereby increasing student civic involvement and advancing critical assessment protocols. Participation in the Consortium also offers an unprecedented opportunity to create an even more refined assessment tool, particularly when combined with other institutional assessment tools already in place at Wagner. The college has strong administrative and faculty support for the institutionalization of assessment protocols that measure ethical development and civic engagement.

Winthrop University

Rock Hill, South Carolina
Affiliation: Public
Carnegie Classification: Master’s 1–Comprehensive
Enrollment: Undergraduate: 5,111, Master’s: 1,181

Overview
Founded as a teacher preparation institution for women in 1886, Winthrop has become a diverse, coeducational university committed to the liberal arts traditions, national caliber professional education, and developing leadership and civic responsibility. We accomplish our goals through a core curriculum (the Touchstone Program), strong major programs in the liberal arts and professional areas, and effective linkages between and among programs/activities in academic affairs and student life. Our student body is twenty-seven percent minority, and among institutions of our type we have one of the highest six-year graduation rates in the nation for African American males. Recently we have put significant resources into sharpening our focus on student learning and development as the center of our mission.

Goals
As part of the Core Commitments Leadership Consortium, Winthrop will infuse the five dimensions of personal and social responsibility throughout the Touchstone Program by including them in the training for three of the four Touchstone courses and by making them prevalent in the assessment of students and faculty in the program. We will use the PSR Institutional Inventory to identify areas of the campus and particular dimensions needing attention and conduct activities (such as workshops and training sessions) to address identified needs. We will work with faculty to build assessment of personal and social responsibility into all program assessment strategies and modify programs as needed to achieve better development in the five dimensions. Our long-term goal is to develop a center for ethical leadership at Winthrop University.