Standard 3 — Academic Excellence

The institution maintains mission-aligned academic systems that assure student preparation for citizenship and careers, personal development, creation of a broad advanced knowledge base, and stimulation of mission-aligned research and innovation. Program offerings provide rigorous learning experiences fundamental to the formation of the individual person. Undergraduate programs include a core that engages students actively in a progressively complex and balanced inclusion of the hard and social sciences as well as classical humanities and arts, and align with student achievement of foundational literacy, data literacy, thought literacy, and social literacy. Programs require a level of rigor appropriate to the degree level and actively engage students in progressive achievement of disciplinary knowledge, inquiry, application, synthesis, discernment, judgement, communication, and independent thought. Graduate programs demonstrate advanced rigor of scholarship and mastery of disciplinary knowledge. Intended learning outcomes are defined with relevance to the institutional mission, are published, and are regularly evaluated and enhanced.

Processes for curriculum review and renewal involve appropriate faculty, administration, and external constituents; are practiced routinely; and incorporate analysis of a broad range of quantifiable data including results of learning outcome evaluation and student achievement measures as well as applicable market study. Program review policies demand innovation in content and pedagogy based on analysis of real data both internally and externally sourced.

The institution maintains abundant, diverse, and relevant learning resources appropriate for the programs and degree levels offered. Resources are sufficient to support dynamic student and faculty research and facilitate innovation in scholarship.