The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has named Delaware State University among the 32 colleges and universities chosen in a competitive process to participate in General Education for a Global Century, a curriculum and faculty development project.

 

The project is part of AAC&U's Shared Futures initiative and is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Over 140 institutions applied to be part of the initiative.

 

"We are excited to be chosen to be part of this AAC&U's development project, especially because Delaware State University launched its new General Education Program a little over a year ago," said Dr. Alton Thompson, DSU provost and vice president of Academic Affairs. "As we work hard to develop our students so they will make their mark on the world, we believe our global emphasis at DSU will provide well-defined and valuable input for this project."

 

Dr. Thompson added that the selection of DSU reflects the University's unique approach to its global studies and general education curricula, an approach that integrates well with the institution's new vision and core values.

 

The DSU team members who will participate in the project are Dr. Alexa Cawley, Dr. Andrew Lloyd, Dr. Akwasi Osei, Phyllis Collins, Dr. Donald Becker, Dr. Padmini Banerjee, and Genevieve Tighe.

 

The institutions selection are from all regions of the country and include institutions of many different types -- including two-year and four-year public and private institutions. The selected colleges and universities:

 

 

 

 

DSU is the only HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) among the 32 institutions selected for this project..

 

“Increasingly, in their mission statements and strategic plans, colleges and universities promise that their graduates will develop the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to act as responsible and productive global citizens in an interconnected and interdependent world. Yet in most cases general education curricular designs have not kept pace with the rhetoric,” said AAC&U Director of Global Learning and Curricular Change Kevin Hovland. “These selected institutions will all be working together to create clear and creative pathways—horizontally and vertically—through which students can connect their learning and achieve essential global learning outcomes. Many of these schools have already made significant progress in reimagining general education for a global century and, in this project, they will be able to test new curricular models, assess global learning outcomes, and share insights with each other and with the larger higher education community.”

 

This new project builds upon innovative efforts to reframe general education courses and programs, and create coherent curricular designs that address complex, global issues across divisions and disciplines. In concert with a Global Learning Leadership Council, DSU will help lead a high profile, national effort to:

 

 

The DSU teams members will spend the fall and winter on their home campuses refining general education reform strategies and strengthening connections between existing general education goals and outcomes and essential global learning outcomes. They will also inventory the curricular and co-curricular opportunities for global learning that already exist on their campuses and ways those opportunities could be better integrated within their larger general education efforts. Working through a social networking website, team members will help identify common areas of interest and concern. Those critical issues will be addressed in the project’s central activity—an intensive summer institute in 2011.

 

“It was gratifying to see how many campuses applied to be part of this initiative,” said AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider. “It is testament to how seriously today’s academy takes the challenge of preparing college students to participate effectively and responsibly in an interdependent global community. Both their future employers and our society need students with much higher levels of global knowledge and skill. This initiative will help the higher education community graduate students with these critical capacities. The Shared Futures initiative and this work on general education are important foci for AAC&U’s ongoing work to connect liberal education with the needs of a fast-changing world.”