NAVIGATING 21ST-CENTURY PATHWAYS scholarship that fosters an inclusive, studentcentered approach to higher education. AUP students are on a journey – they arrive in Paris from all over the world and follow diverse, highly personalized pathways that are tailored to their interests and informed by continuous personal reflection. These pathways form the basis of AUP’s 2020– 23 strategic plan: Navigating 21st-Century Pathways. The aims of the plan are widereaching and include navigating the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, establishing AUP-owned housing for all incoming students and continuing the University’s digital transformation by implementing new IT resources and systems. But the central pillars supporting these goals are a renewal of the University’s holistic, liberal-arts-based curriculum to meet the challenges of a changing world and the communication of the University’s rising reputation and reach.
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In 2013, AUP’s Leadership Team and Board of Trustees, in collaboration with offices and departments across the University, identified the concept of the “global explorer” as the kind of student that AUP exists to educate. Global explorers are students searching for an international university experience that emphasizes personal exploration and extends beyond the classroom into student life, travel, community service, experiential learning and professional development. They embrace the intellectual adventures and cultural challenges inherent in studying abroad. AUP’s last five-year strategic plan, titled AUP Ascending, focused on aligning every program and process, and every structure and strategy, with the needs of the global explorer. The associated capital campaign raised the funds to renovate AUP’s campus into a modern hub of engaged
Navigating 21st-Century Pathways extends this holistic approach to the academic curriculum. “The moment has come to recalibrate our curriculum to make sure it is anticipating the needs and pathways of the global explorer,” says AUP President Celeste M. Schenck. “We’re building a richer curriculum that is paced in ways that allow students to find their own way forward into the world.” The AUP curriculum, embedded in liberal arts roots, has always taken a hybrid approach, continually encouraging students to apply classroom learning to real-world situations. The new strategic plan takes this notion of integrated education a step further, weaving it throughout the entire student life and learning experience.
