Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility

At a time when our nation faces unprecedented ethical and civic challenges of daunting complexity, it is essential that we acknowledge personal and social responsibility as a learning outcome that is no longer optional.

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

Guiding Philosophy

• Higher education institutions have an educational and civic obligation to unapologetically teach for personal and social responsibility.
  
  
• Education for personal and social responsibility, to be intentionally fostered in all students, should pervade institutional cultures.
  
  
• Student learning is the collective responsibility of all individuals and units responsible for the curriculum and co-curriculum.
  
  
• Ethical, civic, and moral development should be closely tied to a substantive vision for student learning in the college years that is shared across constituent groups.
  
  
• The development of personal and social responsibility is cumulative, builds on prior knowledge and experience, and should be assessed along the way.