Past Milestones

• Year 1

  

• Year 2

  

Upcoming Engagement Opportunties for Staff and Faculty

• January 20, 2025: Deadline for Re-imagined First-year Course Proposals

  Please refer to the call for proposals for Reimagined First-year courses that will be taught fall, 2025 for full detail about this opportunity. This second round of pilot courses expands upon the Experimental Introduction to the Liberal Arts First-year courses that are being taught this fall and next spring. The lessons learned from developing and offering these courses, along with feedback from students on their experience, provides insights to the educational models of faculty-staff partnerships. To apply, submit a proposal to EPAG Chair, Mario Solis Garcia, using this form.

• January 21, 2025 Half-day Retreat to Develope Alternative Curricular Models

  Tuesday, January 21, 2025; noon – 4 pm followed by a social hour; Kagin ballroom.

  This half-day retreat will focus on potential curricular changes. This session will begin with a  conversation about the design of different general education models, led by Dr. Paul Hanstedt, who has authored General Education Essentials. Informed by feedback collected from faculty, staff, and students, participants will work in groups to develop several alternative models for general education at Macalester for consideration by the wider campus community. Faculty and staff please RSVP using this form. 

• Collaborative Decision-Making

  Engage faculty, staff, students, and alumni in the curriculum revision process, intentionally including underrepresented voices to ensure diverse perspectives and equity in decision-making. Use evidence and information from faculty, staff, student feedback, and as well as other stakeholders to inform the curricular development.

• Focus on Holistic Student Success

  Prioritize student success by aligning curriculum with diverse educational goals, supporting students’ academic and post-graduation pursuits through intentional curricular design and advising.

• Transparency

  Communicate regularly with diverse constituencies to share up-to-date information concerning the process of curriculum revision. Ensure that the goals and purposes of general education requirements and other components are clearly communicated to students, enhancing their understanding and intentionality in navigating academic pathways.

• Equity

  Prioritize equity by ensuring that all students have access to high-impact learning experiences.

• Regular Assessment and Feedback

  Use continuous assessment as part of an ongoing cycle to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum and incorporate feedback from multiple constituencies

• Strengthen Interdisciplinary Learning and Integrative Thinking

  Ensure that the curriculum fosters interdisciplinary learning and problem-solving, promoting integrative thinking across various fields of study and preparing students to understand and engage diverse perspectives.

Design Principles

• The best practices emerge from the following design principles, which aim to advance the committee’s objectives, reflect the college’s strategic planning goals, and ground its work in the literature on effective curriculum development in higher education.

  • Focus on credit-bearing courses while still considering how they interact with the co-curriculum, that is, the learning that happens outside the classroom.
  • Prioritize equity.
  • Prioritize students and holistic student success. /
  • Recognize, affirm, and assist students in pursuing their varied educational goals. (On the immense variety of student goals and how they may be out of step with an institution’s, see Lattuca & Stark, 120-122.) 
  • Seek to align with our updated mission and the college’s learning goals/outcomes.
  • Utilize the strengths of our academic departments.
  • Move away from transactional thinking (see Fischman & Gardner) and create a model where students assemble classes like blocks to build a meaningful and compelling whole curriculum. We have discussed the metaphor of encouraging students to ‘build a house.’ (See Lattuca & Stark, 146, 171).  “Helping students organize their knowledge so that it is a coherent set of ideas rather than discrete bits of information further assists transfer and intentional learning” (Lattuca & Stark, 223).
  • Center positive human connections and relationships (Felten & Lambert, p5. )
  • Build in opportunities for innovation to keep it ever-fresh. Paul Hanstedt, paraphrasing Jillian Kinzie, observed “those who continue to innovate over-deliver.”
  • Build curricular flexibility to adapt to emerging issues, student needs, and broader shifts in the global and local landscape. 
  • Continue with a teaching and learning philosophy toward assessment (NILOA), using assessment as a constant informative cycle that helps us do our job better (see Hanstedt, 164-169).
  • Incentivize the inclusion of high-impact practices or “significant learning experiences” (Dee Fink, 2016).

Literature on College Curricula

• The committee’s work has been informed by the following sources.

  • Felten, P. & Lambert, L. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. (2020). Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Fink, L. Dee. (2016) Five high-impact teaching practices: A list of possibilities. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching 9, 3-18.
  • Fischman, W. & Gardner, H. (2022). The real world of college: What higher education is and what it can be. The MIT Press.
  • Hanstedt, P. (2024). General Education essentials:A guide for college faculty (2nd ed.). Routledge.
  • Kinzie, J. (2019) Taking Stock of Initiatives to Improve Learning Quality in American Higher Education Through Assessment. Higher Education Policy 32, 577–595. 
  • Lattuca, L. & Stark, J. (2009). Shaping the college curriculum: Academic plans in context (2nd ed.) Jossey-Bass.
  • McNair, T. B., Albertine, S., Major, T., McDonald, N., & Cooper, M.A. (2022). Becoming a student-ready college: A new culture of leadership for student success (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
  • Mintz, S. (2024). The learning-centered university: Making college a more developmental, transformational, and equitable experience. Johns Hopkins University Press.