Faculty endorse 'Goals for Student Learning'

The Skidmore faculty endorsed at their December meeting a statement of Goals for Student Learning and Development that will serve as the framework for assessing student learning and development at all levels of the curriculum and in other arenas as well.

In development for more than a year by the Assessment Steering Committee (ASC) and the Committee on Education Policies and Planning (CEPP), the Goals draft underwent multiple revisions after public discussions on campus. Faculty discussed it repeatedly, as did other groups across campus. The draft was a major focus of discussion in the series of town hall meetings that the College conducted through the fall in Boston, Hartford, Purchase, N.Y, and New York City. The series will continue in January and February in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Saratoga Springs.

"It is Skidmore's mission to educate our students," Sarah Goodwin, professor of English and chair of the ASC has told alumni and parents in her 15-minute presentations at each of the Your Voice, Our Future meetings. "If we can't attest that that education is working, if we can't aggregate evidence that something really palpable is happening and talk about it, then we're really not doing our jobs."

Among the evidence Goodwin aims to aggregate will be the results of a major longitudinal study of alumni that the ASC plans to launch in the fall of 2010, In developing that survey, she is testing a half-dozen questions on this year's reunion classes, asking them (for instance) to rank the most valuable things they learned in their major and to indicate how well they think their major prepared them for professional work or graduate study. In open-ended questions, she also is asking alumni to reflect on ways they think their majors might be improved and ways their professions are changing that current majors should be learning about.

Through the Washington, D.C. meeting in November, about 450 alumni and parents had attended the College's off-campus town hall meetings, which are being conducted as part of the College's review at the halfway point of its ten-year Strategic Plan. For more information on the Your Voice, Our Future series, click here.

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TheText in Full:
Goals for Student Learning and Development

The goals that follow reflect the unique characteristics and synergies of our B.A. and B.S. programs, as well as certain emphases that are deeply engrained in Skidmore's history and culture: on creativity, on civic responsibility, and on interdisciplinary thinking.  As in the past, we aim to graduate students who strive for excellence, think deeply and creatively, and communicate and act effectively.  We continue to ask our students to link theoretical and practical learning, and now also to develop intercultural understanding and an appreciation of their roles as global citizens. These goals have much in common with those of all liberal arts colleges who share a common mission, though we take pride in having long approached them in our own distinctive way.

Our goals emerge in particular from our collective sense of a Skidmore education as a transformative experience. We want our students to acquire both knowledge and capacities that enable them to initiate and embrace change and apply their learning lifelong in new contexts. We believe that this learning takes place throughout our students' experience, both inside the classroom and out, on campus and off. Our goals articulate, then, in language that is as clear and lean as possible, our understanding of students' learning and development at Skidmore. They lay the groundwork for our continued inquiry into the evidence of that learning.

I. Knowledge

• Acquire knowledge of human cultures and the physical world through study in the arts, humanities, languages, mathematics, natural sciences, and social sciences
• Understand social and cultural diversity in national and global contexts
• Demonstrate advanced learning and synthesis in both general and specialized studies
  

II. Intellectual Skills and Practice

• Think critically, creatively, and independently
• Gather, analyze, integrate, and apply varied forms of information; understand and use evidence

• Communicate effectively
• Interact effectively and collaboratively with individuals and across social identities
• Engage in and take responsibility for learning; strive for excellence

III. Personal and Social Values

• Examine one's own values and their use as ethical criteria in thought and action
• Interrogate one's own values in relation to those of others, across social and cultural differences
• Develop practical competencies for managing a personal, professional, and community life
• Apply learning to find solutions for social, civic, and scientific problems

IV. Transformation

• Integrate and apply knowledge and creative thought from multiple disciplines in new contexts
• Embrace intellectual integrity, humility, and courage
• Foster habits of mind and body that enable a person to live deliberately and well
• Develop an enduring passion for learning