Liberal Education and America's Promise
LEAP Utah
In October, 2009, AAC&U announced the launch of a Utah LEAP statewide partnership. Building on years of work throughout the state of Utah, including its annual conference, What is an Educated Person?, public and private colleges and universities throughout the state of Utah have joined forces to ensure that all Utah college students achieve the learning outcomes they will need for success in a competitive global economy and for responsible citizenship and leadership in their communities.
Working in partnership with the Commissioner of Higher Education, William Sederburg, and business leaders in the state through the Salt Lake City Chamber, LEAP Utah will also conduct regional and statewide dialogues about how best to educate Utah students for the challenges of the 21st century.
Institutions throughout Utah have already begun educational reform efforts working with the essential learning outcomes recommended in the LEAP national report, College Learning for the New Global Century. The Utah Regents Task Force on General Education endorsed these outcomes as a guiding framework for general education reform throughout the system. See below for examples of how individual campuses are advancing essential learning outcomes and a set of high-impact educational practices that improve student achievement.
See Salt Lake Chamber video on why "Education is Key to Utah's economic future."
LEAP Utah Events
What is an Educated Person? Conference
Theme: Changing Perspectives on General Education: Students, Faculty, and the Business Community
November 5, 2010
The Grand American Hotel
Salt Lake City, Utah
(Sponsored by Utah System of Higher Education)
For registration information, contact Monica Ingold at monica.ingold@usu.edu
Raising the Bar: Preparing College Students for Life, Work, and Responsible Citizenship
(a LEAP Public Forum)
April 14, 2010—Salt Lake City
Co-sponsored by AAC&U, the Utah System of Higher Education, and the Salt Lake City Chamber Education Initiative
This invitational campus-community public forum engaged academics, business leaders, K-12 educators, policymakers, and community leaders with the kinds of college learning American students will need to meet twenty-first-century challenges—economic, civic, global, personal. The forum highlighted and drew on the innovative work of Utah campuses and schools to improve student achievement, and also called upon key stakeholders to provide leadership for carrying action agendas forward on campuses, in schools, in the business community, and in the policy arena.
LEAP Utah Campus Activities and Projects
Tuning Initiative
Utah is one of three states funded by The Lumina Foundation for Education to pilot a process called Tuning modeled on a similar effort launched in Europe and known as the Bologna Process. The Bologna Process was launched in 1999 by education ministers in 29 European countries and is designed to improve transfer, articulation, and the expression of outcomes by asking what experiences are essential to particular college degrees.
Utah was invited to participate in the Tuning Process because it already conducts a similar exercise annually. In Utah, some 32 academic disciplines meet yearly to discuss transfer, articulation, learning outcomes, competencies, and assessment. Faculty involved in this process in Utah are mapping the cross-cutting outcomes that guide the LEAP initiative to those already expected of students in particular fields. As part of the initial Tuning Process, Utah is involving physics and history faculty in all institutions in the Utah System of Higher Education to clarify their learning outcomes at depths appropriate for each academic credential beginning with the associate degree and moving up to the doctorate.
Watch for reports from the Tuning Process in early 2010.
Utah System of Higher Education Majors’ Meetings
In 1998 the Utah System of Higher Education created the Regents’ Task Force on General Education, a faculty group that advises the Regents on General Education transfer, articulation, and assessment. The Task Force was an outgrowth of work done by faculty from each of the nine institutions who, in 1992, met on their own for the first time to discuss why students from two-year institutions were repeating the same courses when they transferred to four-year institutions. Their work modeled the ways in which professionals from two- and four-year institutions share professional values and are able to articulate them for the system.
What started as a faculty-driven effort has now become Regents’ policy and a hallmark of transfer and articulation in Utah. In addition to regular meetings of this task force on issues related to general education, some 32 academic disciplines now meet in 28 annual faculty meetings. In their eleventh year, these meetings, known as the Majors’ meetings, while still addressing transfer, articulation, and commonly numbered courses, also address competency development, pedagogy, assessment and the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs). In their second year of discussing ELOs, some discipline groups have mapped these learning outcomes to their professional association standards while others have taken a course by course review.
Selected Utah Campus Examples of LEAP Activities or High-Impact Practices
University of Utah
In fall 2008, the University of Utah’s Undergraduate Council endorsed a set of Learning Outcomes for the General Education Program building on the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes. In order to assess the impact of these learning outcomes on courses and student learning, the University of Utah has added a step to the process through which departments proceed in order to get their course certified for a General Education Requirement. Beginning in fall 2009, departments applying for a course to have general education designation will be asked to select at least three of the learning outcomes that they believe students in the course will achieve. They will also be asked to select an assignment from their syllabus that can be used to measure students’ achievement of the learning outcomes selected for the course. See the Office of Undergraduate Studies for more information.
Utah State University
First-Year Experience
Roughly two thirds of the first year class at Utah State University participates in Connections, a first year experience that focuses on developing critical college study skills, time-management techniques, and test-taking strategies, as well as promoting an awareness of the campus and community. It encourages the development of a support network of classmates, faculty, and staff to help ensure a successful beginning to students’ academic experiences. At the core of Connections is the Common Literature Experience, in which all freshmen, the University, and the broader community read a book, participating in discussions and a lecture from the author. See University Connections for more information.
Undergraduate Research
More than 26 percent of Utah State University’s graduating seniors report on the National Survey of Student Engagement that they engaged in independent research with a faculty mentor during their undergraduate career. In these projects, research, teaching, and scholarship become parts of one simultaneous, overlapping, shared process. Undergraduates at Utah State can become active scholars throughout their undergraduate careers, not just at the last stages. See the Utah State Research Office for more information about this high-impact educational practice and how it is being implemented at USU.
Salt Lake Community College
SLCC has passed a college-wide set of learning outcomes that guide program and course development. SLCC is also developing General Education electronic portfolios through which students can archive “signature assignments” and track their progress in achieving these learning outcomes. The portfolios will be designed to provide students a place to reflect on their learning and how each course at the College helped them meet essential learning outcomes and grow as a learner and as a person.
Utah Valley University
Center for Engaged Learning
UVU recently launched its Center for Engaged Learning through which it is working to connect the university more directly with the local community and to develop an educational model that is community-based. The model of the CEL includes three components—helping UVU students become: people of integrity (e.g. ethics, leadership and character); stewards of place (e.g. serving the region, bolstering economic development, service learning, global awareness); and professionally competent (e.g. quality teaching, up-to-date scholarship, faculty mentorship, advising, and internships). See the Center for Engaged Learning for more information about activities and programs.
Women and Education Project
Utah Valley University hosts and leads the Women and Education Project (WEP) for the state of Utah from 2009-2011. The general purpose of the overall project is to collect information and original data that will be beneficial for many Utah stakeholders in leading efforts in the state toward 1) getting more young women to enter college and 2) helping women stay in school long enough to obtain college degrees. See their recent research and policy brief, “The Value of Higher Education for Women in Utah,” and more information on WEP.
Westminster College
E-portfolio Assessment of Learning Goals
Westminster College has established a set of college-wide learning goals for all students. Faculty and staff in both academic and co-curricular programs have mapped where these goals are formally addressed and have developed systems to assess student achievement of each learning goal. In 2009-10, Westminster is piloting an e-portfolio program where students collect and display artifacts of their best work relative to each of the college-wide learning goals. This effort is part of the college’s effort to focus on the quality of the students it graduates rather than focusing on the quality of the class they admit, and to shift the college’s educational paradigm from teaching to learning. Westminster also believes that the formal collection of evidence will further validate its value proposition and enable us to respond to the increasing demand that higher education be accountable for, and measured by, the results it achieves.
The First Year Program Learning Communities
Westminster College offers a coordinated and dynamic first year experience for students, through its First Year Orientation program, Learning Communities, and Mentoring Program. Interdisciplinary learning communities at Westminster are offered to all first-year students and link two classes together with a common theme in order to build integration across disciplines and to foster deeper understanding of each discipline. These interdisciplinary courses are designed to help first year students adjust to college, improve critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills, practice writing and presentation skills, and establish strong relationships with other students and faculty. Faculty members teaching in learning communities also serve as mentors for first year students. Mentors welcome their first year students to the Westminster campus, assist students in the transition to college life, provide information and advice about liberal education requirements, and mentor students as they begin their studies and throughout their first year at Westminster. Faculty mentors also provide information to students regarding choice of major and career options.
LEAP Utah Institutions
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