Editor’s note: This is part of a monthly series of campus updates on CU Boulder’s efforts to build a common student-centered approach to teaching and learning. This series will continue throughout the academic year.

Leadership team continues work to identify dimensions of student success

The Buff Undergraduate Success Leadership Implementation Team (BUS-LIT) is meeting weekly to develop statements that identify the dimensions of student success from an undergraduate student perspective as well as roadblocks to students’ achieving their goals and earning their degrees.

The team has also been working on building an inventory of existing student success efforts and recommendations that are tied to IDEA Plan, Academic Futures and Foundations of Excellence recommendations and other existing efforts in place.

The team also has convened interactive sessions during the monthly chairs and directors and associate/assistant vice chancellor meetings, providing small group discussions around student success and an opportunity to capture feedback from campus on what aids or hampers student success. Additionally, a group of deans is focusing on issues and opportunities for increasing student success in the Alternative College Option (ACO) student populations.

During the time remaining in the fall semester, the BUS-LIT’s focus will be on reviewing and organizing these various efforts with an eye toward setting student success priorities based on complexity, impact and how concrete and measurable they are.

The BUS-LIT, specified in the chancellor’s recent charge (PDF), will determine a method for assessing the effectiveness of current and planned programs and bringing them to leadership's attention. It will act in tandem with cross-functional working groups that will be responsible for inventorying and analyzing student success efforts on campus and taking action to support their progress.

Common curriculum committee discusses themes, values and habits of mind

The Common Curriculum Planning Committee (CCPC) is actively discussing themes, values and habits of mind important to a CU Boulder undergraduate education for consideration for a common curriculum.

The committee, which includes faculty representatives from across campus as well as staff members with expertise in curriculum development, has also been reviewing the information gathered during last spring’s listening tour along with themes and curricular goals used at AAU peer and non-peer universities for fresh ideas and outside input.

“We are working to develop the touch points throughout the undergraduate experience as called out by the Academic Futures report,” said Katherine Eggert, senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment and a co-lead of the committee with Daryl Maeda, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education. These touchpoints will then be delivered to the campus community for comment and review later in the spring semester.”

The committee is charged with the important work of weighing campus input; studying current CU Boulder school and college general education requirements as well as models from peer institutions and elsewhere; reviewing the current scholarship on the purpose and function of an institution-wide undergraduate curriculum; and writing a draft plan for a CU Boulder common curriculum that they will then revise based on further campus review and input.

The campus continues to encourage white papers on any aspect of the common curriculum. Submit white papers through the common curriculum webpage. Any questions or feedback about the discussion and process may be sent to commoncurriculum@colorado.edu.