INTEGRATIONS CURRICULUM

Virtually all colleges and universities, particularly liberal arts colleges, have a common or core curriculum – a selection of courses from various disciplines that are deemed essential for a complete education. Typically, this involves students selecting from a menu of course offerings to meet requirements.

The shortcoming of this traditional approach is that students are often more focused on their courses and majors than they are on the comprehensive body of knowledge that they need to acquire and master for a wellrounded liberal arts education.

Today’s world requires us to re-think this approach. This is something that all higher education has been examining and pondering, including Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s. How can we be more relevant to the times?

“The status quo isn’t going to work. We know that,” Ice says. “In response we have designed an innovative new curriculum that focuses on the integration of knowledge and learning outcomes.”

The result is the new Integrations Curriculum. (We’re currently in the third year of a four-year roll-out as we phase in the Integrations Curriculum and phase out the prior “Common Curriculum.”)

“It’s all about connections,” Daughters says. “The curriculum is designed to guide students through reflection on the value of their education. This culminates in a senior capstone for which students integrate the knowledge gained through their coursework and campus experiences and connect it to their future vocation and the common good.”

Integrated learning – the ability to see relationships among the arts, the sciences and the humanities – is a valuable, real-life skill that makes CSB and SJU graduates highly sought-after by employers and the nation’s top graduate programs.

“The basic tenet of the new Integrations Curriculum at Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s is that it is outcome-based, which will improve the product for students,” observes Ice. “It is also what employers are looking for; that learning occurs in and outside the classroom at CSB and SJU; and that it is about innovation, expansion and moving forward.”

What are these outcomes?

Upon completion of the Integrations Curriculum, students will be adept in the following skill areas highly valued in all career fields.

· Analyzing Texts – Elicit and construct meaning from texts.

· Collaboration – Interact effectively in a group while incorporating diverse perspectives.

· Common Good – Develop a conception of a moral life that incorporates concern for the common good.

· Gender – Examine the social construction of gender and related individual and systemic inequities.

· Information Literacy – Identify, evaluate and responsibly use information.

· Metacognition – Optimize one’s own thinking and learning processes.

· Quantitative Reasoning – Solve quantitative problems and develop and communicate arguments supported by quantitative evidence.

· Race and Ethnicity – Examine the social construction of race and ethnicity and resulting inequities.

· Religious Engagement – Analyze religious engagement with society.

· Speak – Construct ideas, opinions and information in appropriate oral forms.

· Theological Reasoning – Think critically about sources, doctrines and themes of the Christian tradition.

· Write – Construct ideas, opinions and information in appropriate written forms.

“The Integrations Curriculum is an exciting innovation for general education at CSB and SJU. We have moved away from distributed box checking to intentional pursuit of learning outcomes that more clearly define what we expect students to be able to do when they graduate,” Daughters says.

“I hope the new general education requirements are the last major general education reform we ever do – not because we’re going to perfect it, but because we’re going to constantly be changing and updating it,” Ice says. “The curriculum now has got to be constantly updated and changed to reflect the needs of society.”