Engaged Learning & the Core Curriculum

New Engaged Learning Core Curriculum requirement officially approved!

Beginning in Fall 2024, all students in the College of Arts & Sciences will take one course from an Engaged Learning distribution list populated by courses from across the university. The Office of Engaged Learning will work with faculty to develop new engaged learning courses that help students meet the degree requirement.

Engaged Learning Core Requirement

Description

Engaged Learning courses will “educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service” in keeping with the mission of Baylor University by helping students develop skills to orient and apply their classroom learning toward broader public goods. This will occur through learning that is active, experiential, often unscripted, and oriented toward the common good, allowing students to discover and apply knowledge in spaces beyond the traditional classroom.

Objectives

The following criteria must be met for each course in the proposed Engaged Learning distribution list.

1. As citizens of local, national, and global communities, students will gain first-hand exposure to experiences with communities outside the classroom, developing skills for engagement in a diverse world.

2. Students will develop an informed understanding of complex social, environmental, political, and/or economic challenges through readings, experiences, and assignments, along with a sense of responsibility for addressing these challenges.

3. Students will use knowledge gained and skills developed in the course to cultivate civic virtues and contribute to the public good.

Criteria

• Students will take one 1-4-hour course from the Engaged Learning Distribution List.

• Courses may be at any level (1000, 2000, 3000, or 4000)

• Department Requirement: All academic departments, academic programs, and academic administrative offices at the University may offer courses in this distribution list.

• Each course must promote civic responsibility and offer direct pathways for students to connect course content to efforts that further the public good. This can take a variety of forms, such as:

  • Learning and service within diverse communities outside the classroom in ways that explore, illustrate, apply, and/or inform the course’s academic content.

  • Courses that require students to connect, translate, or apply research activities or findings to civic purposes or social challenges.

  • Course-based internships that clearly involve public concerns and efforts to promote human flourishing.

Courses offered outside the United States in which students (1) articulate cultural values and demonstratecuriosity and openness in their behaviors and attitudes toward the experience of living abroad, and (2) engage in cultural exchange within their host country and promote cross-cultural understanding.

Justification

An Engaged Learning requirement is in keeping with the Vision Statement of the Core Curriculum as it cultivates “various skills necessary for the completion of an academic degree, but [that are] also essential for personal and professional life beyond Baylor” by:

• Providing bridges from the classroom to the broader world

• Inspiring “moral, intellectual, and spiritual virtues”

• Encouraging course-based and academically informed activities that improve the lives of people and their environments

• Offering students “knowledge of their participation in natural systems [that] will provide a rich awareness of the interdependence of all physical systems while the skills acquired in their examination will enable [them] to cultivate responsible habits;”

• Teaching “the skill of critical reasoning . . . including problem-solving . . . [with the aim to] cultivate patience and intellectual humility in the search for truth,”

• Helping students “gain a deeper understanding of and empathy for people from other societies, races, genders, ethnicities, and socio-economic statuses.”

• Furthermore, this Distribution List “supports and builds upon Baylor University’s General Education Outcomes – clear communication, critical thinking, civic responsibility, and Christian perspective – expected of all graduates of Baylor University.”