When Clemson faculty were asked in fall 2017 to consider the idea of what our students should be able to know and do regardless of major, a number of items emerged:
These were grouped by faculty in January 2018 and given terms such as “adulting,” “personal growth” and “life skills.” Ultimately, another colleague termed the group “Building Personal Intelligence,” which seems like a good phrase for guiding our discussion!
The Clemson Center for Career and Profession Development (CCPD) has developed a series of competencies for students to make transparent the skills and habits that our students should develop prior to starting their careers: https://career.sites.clemson.edu/core/
Colleges in the Texas system are part of a “LEAP” (Liberal Education and America’s Promise) initiative and developed a Texas Core Curriculum for Higher Education. They have common student learning outcomes across all Universities in the following areas: 1.) Critical Thinking Skills, 2.) Communication Skills, 3.) Empirical & Quantitative Skills, 4.) Teamwork, 5.) Personal Responsibility, and 6.) Social Responsibility. The Personal Responsibility student learning outcome is defined as: to include the ability to connect choices, actions and consequences to ethical decision-making. (http://leaptx.org/coreobjectives/personal-responsibility/)
The Association of American Colleges & Universities (AACU) embarked on a large project in the last decade to make transparent the aims and promise of undergraduate education. The creation of the VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) rubrics provides Universities with a tool to think about undergraduate learning in a variety of fields – https://www.aacu.org/value-rubrics. Their rubrics for “Foundations and Skills for Lifelong Learning” and “Teamwork” address some of the areas raised by Clemson faculty. Link to rubrics: AACU_LL_Teams.