Academic Quality Improvement Program - Distinctive General Education Curriculum Based on Augsburg 2004 Vision
September, 2006
AQIP Action Project Update
1. Describe the past year’s accomplishments and the current status of this Action Project.
We have just completed the third year of our implementation of the AugCore Curriculum. The first group of four-year students will enter their senior year this fall. Most will find the final element in the curriculum, the keystone course, awaiting them in their major. Only a few (significantly, however, in the Fine Arts and Sciences/Math) will take a general education keystone in the Religion Department, (although proposals for their keystones will be approved this fall). In other words, with the exception of revised graduation skills, the curriculum is in place. This remaining element of the curriculum is moving through the approval process and implementation will begin in the fall.
The Academic Affairs Committee approved a subcommittee that will provide governance for AugCore Curriculum. This group can help coordinate the work of the collaboratives/leadership teams (groups in charge of each component of the AugCore curriculum) and be a source of ongoing research, assessment, and continued design.
2. Describe how the institution involved people in work on this Action
Project.
This Action Project involved the following areas of the college: Collaboratives/leadership teams involving four to eight people for each component of the AugCore Curriculum; Workshops for entire faculty (First Year Student Workshop, Critical Conversations on Vocation throughout year); Academic committee work as appropriate; Open hearings on diversity infusion learning outcomes and grad skills proposals; Student Services and Academic Support staff met to determine how the co-curriculum is a partner in general education.
3. Describe your planned next steps for this Action Project.
The creation of a AugCore subcommittee of the Academic Affairs Committee will provide a formal structure (beyond the Bush Grant-created collaboratives) to make the implementation and renewal of the AugCore Curriculum an institutional priority beyond its status as an AQIP Action Project. The challenge will be to use this committee to go beyond the legislative function of governance to include assessment, design, research, and faculty development.
Other “next steps” include: implementation of LASSI (Learning And Study Skills Inventory) as a first-year assessment tool and the further refinement and development of the infusion model of diversity and global awareness.
4. What challenges, if any, are you still facing in regards to this Action
Project?
We are challenged to build a “general education citizenship.” This means identifying, developing, and rewarding faculty whose professional identify can be partly fulfilled by teaching first-year students, who will be able to profess the public purposes of their disciplines, and who will attend to skills as well as content in general education courses. Finally, defining and developing an infusion model of diversity and global awareness remains a very important challenge.
5. Describe an “effective practice(s)” that resulted from work on this Action project.
One example of an effective practice is the administration of the LASSI to our first-year students and addressing the results in AugSem. Study skills coaches will collect and analyze results, which will be reported to students and faculty two-three weeks into the semester. Specific areas of widespread concern will shape AugSem Curriculum. We will follow a group of students for four years, and study the correlation between LASSI results, retention, etc. We will ask these students to retake LASSI to determine whether our curriuculum results in improved study skills/motivations, etc. after the first year.
