As we contemplate graduation at the end of next week and the coming summer months, I’d like to provide some food for thought as we think about the next academic year. Today is particularly conducive to pondering with the rain coming down in sheets and thunder rumbling in the distance. As I have learned over the years, the thought of snow is not unusual for Denver in May.
The Association of American Colleges & Universities recently published a series of papers on “building a new liberal education,” which asks the questions “who our future students are and what they and employers want.” Also included were perspective pieces on whether we are “being bold enough” and “addressing the right issues.”
C. Edward Watson and Kathryne Drezek McConnell in their article “What Really Matters for Employment?” summarized the findings of two employer surveys from 2018 and concluded that the “skills sets of graduates—rather than their major—might matter most in hiring.” The skills most desired were “flexibility, mental agility, ethics, resilience, systems thinking, communication, and critical thinking.” They also determined that employers want job seekers who have had experiences that develop those skills, which are the high-impact practices we all know: undergraduate research, community engagement, service learning, internships, and writing-intensive courses. To build on these findings, they recommend institutions should “highlight the specific skills engendered by study at their institution or in their field” and “help students articulate the skills they possess.” (Their article contains a graph depicting the sharp declines in the percentage of BA degrees awarded to Humanities majors in the past 10 years).
https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/2018/fall/watson_mcconnell
Another article by MaryAnn Baenninger titled “Learning Everywhere: The End of ‘Extracurricular” similarly stresses the criticality of high-impact practices in transforming undergraduate education in the liberal arts and sciences and describes their evolution over time. Service learning and internships changed from student volunteering and busy work to true partnerships between students and the organizations with whom they engage. How do we grow these opportunities and how do we adapt? Suggestions include “thinking more clearly and strategically about postcollege planning, what that means, and how to blend it seamlessly into the experience of others” and not “merely adding career-specific majors,” “creating a course focused on solving ‘wicked problems’…[which] can incorporate ways of knowing from several disciplines,” and bringing to our students “certifications and other modular learning opportunities.” https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/2018/fall/baenninger
These ideas have percolated through CLAS in the past several months. CLAS Council is examining the CLAS graduation requirements with a lens toward “wicked problems,” interdisciplinary approaches, and team-teaching. The CLAS Budget Priorities Committee discussed the design of skills-based certificates, such as communication skills, from existing courses. The Individually Structured Major was expanded to include flexible health-focused tracks centered on specific minors to let students tailor their academic experiences.
My request is that we think about how we might be daring and what we might do collectively as faculty, students, and staff over the next few months and that we have these conversations in CLAS as the next academic year begins. If you have ideas in the meantime, please let me know.
Thanks to all of you for everything you do every day to make CU Denver a special place. Congratulations to our graduates and to everyone who guided their paths to the finish line.
And enjoy the rare dreary day before the summer is upon us.
