This Week's Message
Student learning is the focus of what we do at Augustana College. From our curricular and co-curricular offerings, to classroom pedagogy; from the intellectual atmosphere that we help develop and nurture, to the policy decisions we make; all of our efforts are geared toward improving student learning. All this begs the question, what is it exactly that we want our students to learn? Each of us most likely have our own answer to this question.
However, even if our answers vary, we have a sense of common purpose and mission that unites us in what we do each and every day. As we work to improve student learning and articulate the value of an Augustana liberal arts education, it is heartening indeed to have an explicit set of college-wide student learning outcomes that clearly state the educational and developmental outcomes of an Augustana education. This will help focus our efforts as we undertake any further curriculum revisions and plan for our future.
The college-wide Student Learning Outcomes that were unanimously approved at the November 14, 2012 Faculty Meeting include:
| Quantitative Literacy | Critical Thinking | Disciplinary Knowledge |
| Collaborative Leadership | Information Literacy | Communication Competency |
| Creative Thinking | Intercultural Competency | Intellectual Curiosity |
| Ethical Citizenship |
A sincere thank you to the members of the Assessment for Improvement Committee, and the leadership of Dr. Hay that worked with our faculty to accomplish this significant task. Now that we have these outcomes, our next challenge will be to map these outcomes to our core curriculum, our majors and our co-curricular programs and experiences. These outcomes will allow us to be more intentional with our students, as we communicate the value and importance of their Augustana residential liberal arts experience.
Pareena Lawrence