GOAL: To create a University experience that enriches the lives of undergraduates and helps them to become well-informed individuals, lifelong learners, engaged citizens, and productive employees and employers.

The University considers excellent undergraduate education the core of its mission. In meeting this responsibility, we will provide high-quality curricular and cocurricular programs that encourage intellectual and physical vitality and help students acquire the habits of mind that sustain lifetime learning. We also will provide safe and healthy settings in which students can learn to lead and work with others, solve problems and serve their communities, and treat one another with integrity, civility, and respect.

Strategy: Recruit and retain a student population that can succeed at a comprehensive research university, and nurture their success, by:

• Tailoring admission policies to ensure that admitted students demonstrate both strong preparation and motivation for college-level work;
• Collaborating with K-12 education to help define academic competencies appropriate for college bound students;
• Providing access through an appropriate blend of merit- and need-based financial aid and by increasing the amount of aid available;
• Easing the transition for new students, guiding all students through their majors, and providing excellent academic advising.

Strategy: Promote excellent teaching, effective learning environments, and learning opportunities that leverage the University’s strengths by:

• Introducing students to the process by which research, scholarship, and creative work are produced and enabling their participation in that process, which is the key “value added” of a comprehensive research university;
• Developing more first-year seminars, honors courses, and other small class venues where students can interact with tenured faculty;
• Strengthening the honors program and other opportunities for high-achieving students.

Strategy: Ensure that all students graduate with strong core skills, a broad liberal arts education, and concentrated study in one or more majors by:

• Promoting their facility for critical thinking, writing, and other communication skills, creative endeavor, and the use of information technology;
• Providing them with opportunities to develop leadership and teamwork skills and an understanding of business and other organizations;
• Reexamining our general education requirements to ensure that course requirements foster an appreciation of the arts and humanities; an understanding of science, technology, and mathematics; an ability to work within and across disciplinary boundaries; and the skills needed to participate in an increasingly global environment;
• Augmenting support for the research collections, libraries, museums, and information technologies, broadly defined, that are critical to teaching and learning;
• Continuing efforts to internationalize the educational experience.

Strategy: Help undergraduates prepare for life within and beyond college by:

• Instilling in them a respect for the life of the mind and a habit of lifelong learning;
• Communicating to them the value of community involvement and participation in democratic governance;
• Creating with them a safe environment in which to live, learn, and work, including opportunities to participate in health-promoting activities;
• Providing career advising that will enable them to pursue their employment goals;
• Providing educational experiences that will prompt them to consider the role postgraduate education could play in their lives;
• Providing curricular and cocurricular opportunities that will enable them to
  understand and succeed in a multicultural and global community.

Indicators of Progress

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