Foundations of Excellence First -Year Student Final Report and Recommendations 2017

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University are working with the Foundations of Excellence (FoE) of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education (JNGI) to develop a comprehensive First-Year Experience (FYX) as part of the SD2020 Liberal Arts for Life goal of meeting “the needs and aspirations and exceed the expectations of a 21st century student body.” The FYX is not merely a program or set of programs, but an environment that encompasses all the students’ experiences and relationships with the institutions from the time of their deposit until they return for their sophomore year. FoE provides a way to systematically and candidly evaluate programs, policies, and procedures across departments and programs. This self-study becomes the basis for an action plan designed to improve student learning, persistence, and personal development. With the collaboration and guidance of JNGI, project leaders Karen Erickson, Emily Esch, Mary Geller, and Doug Mullin organized a working task force comprised of faculty, administrators, staff, and students from across both campuses. The task force organized into committees that evaluated CSB/SJU performance on the nine aspirational principles of excellence, termed the Foundational Dimensions® and developed recommendations to improve the experience of first-year students. The “Dimension Committees” were aided in their evidence gathering by two surveys, one of first-year students and one of faculty and staff. These surveys ask questions about respondents perceptions of institutional performance of each dimension. We also conducted an audit of policies and practices related to all first-year students and made that information available through the Current Practices Inventory (CPI). We entered into this study with the belief that our usual high retention rates for first-year students suggest that our institutions have been doing many things well for the students we have been serving. Our evaluation bore this out. However, we are also aware that our student demographics are changing as they become more reflective of national demographics, particularly as we draw more students each year from growing population centers which are all outside of Minnesota

Making Connections: Transforming General Education at the College of St. Benedict and St. John\u27s University

We propose to move from a cafeteria-style general education distribution system that emphasizes the “collection of courses,” to an integrated, purposeful, and reflective general education program that places emphasis on “making connections.” Implementing this vision for general education will require a significant paradigm shift in the way we design and deliver the Common Curriculum. This paradigm shift has at least five different features: First, it implies a shift away from an emphasis on course content to a paradigm that also stresses student learning and the fulfillment of essential learning outcomes. While course content will still be important, this report assumes a shift from “what is taught” to a pedagogy that also includes emphasis on “what is learned” (Gaston 2015, p. 8). Second, the report envisions moving from a general education program where learning goals are delivered in separate, individual courses to a program where courses are scaffolded in a developmentally appropriate sequence, assuring that students encounter, practice and refine key proficiencies and capabilities in multiple settings and in progressively challenging ways. Third, it suggests rejecting the assumption that the general education program and the major are separate programs. The paradigm assumed in this report emphasizes the integration of the general education program and the major. Students should not perceive general education as something to “get out of the way,” but rather as a foundation of liberal learning that is reinforced by work in a specific discipline. Fourth, this report assumes the need for a shift in the way faculty and departments perceive themselves in relation to other colleagues and disciplines. Instead of working in isolation from other departments and in possible competition with other colleagues, this report envisions faculty working collaboratively to create thematic course clusters that allow students to address significant problems from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. Finally, this report assumes that a variety of campus and external audiences have a stake in a rigorous, integrative, and coherent program of general education at CSB/SJU. In particular, this report rejects the assumption that the curricular and co-curricular should be viewed as separate entities with unrelated missions and functions. While faculty retain the sole authority to revise the undergraduate curriculum, it must do so in conversation with other key campus stakeholders