SHU CHOSEN BY AAC&U TO JOIN INITIATIVE ON EDUCATING STUDENTS FOR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY NEWS 
Contact: Funda Alp, 203-396-8241, alpf@sacredheart.edu
For Immediate Release
April 11, 2007
SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY CHOSEN BY AAC&U TO JOIN INITIATIVE ON EDUCATING STUDENTS FOR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
FAIRFIELD, Conn.—The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) announced today that Sacred Heart University (SHU) is one of the next seven institutions chosen to participate in the national initiative, Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility. The initiative seeks to embed personal and social responsibility objectives pervasively across the institution as key educational outcomes for students and measure the impact of campus efforts to foster such learning.
“Sacred Heart University is honored to be included in the Core Commitments initiative,” said President Anthony J. Cernera, Ph.D. “Developing students’ sense of responsibility – to themselves and to society – is an integral part of a college education. Cultivating students’ abilities to make responsible decisions, professionally, personally, and socially will serve them well today and in the future.”
In inviting SHU to join the Core Commitments Leadership Consortium, AAC&U considered the University’s work already accomplished on its core curriculum, especially the common core: The Human Journey, and its Freshman Mentor Program, as well as its future plans to deepen this commitment. SHU will create campus-specific plans to implement one of the key recommendations articulated in AAC&U’s recent report from its campaign, Liberal Education and America’s Promise – to foster civic, intercultural, and ethical learning as part of a comprehensive liberal education. The report can be read online in full at www.aacu.org/leap.
According to Dr. Michelle Loris, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and chair of the University’s Core Committee, “SHU is absolutely delighted and honored to be among the 25 institutions chosen by AAC&U to participate in this national Core Commitments Leadership Consortium. This project will enhance and deepen our work on the new core curriculum, particularly our common core, The Human Journey.”
Project Director Caryn McTighe Musil, senior vice president at AAC&U, enumerated the five key dimensions of personal and social responsibility that form the core of this initiative and that will focus the work on campuses:
- Striving for excellence: developing a strong work ethic and consciously doing one’s very best in all aspects of college;
- Cultivating personal and academic integrity: recognizing and acting on a sense of honor ranging from honesty in relationships to principled engagement with a formal academic honors code;
- Contributing to a larger community: recognizing and acting on one’s responsibility to the educational community (classroom, campus life), the local community, and the wider society, both national and global;
- Taking seriously the perspectives of others: recognizing and acting on the obligation to inform one’s own judgment; engaging diverse and competing perspectives as a resource for learning, for citizenship, and for work;
- Developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning: developing ethical and moral reasoning in ways that incorporate the other four responsibilities; using such reasoning in learning and in life.
As part of the initiative, all 25 campuses participating in Core Commitments Leadership Consortium will administer AAC&U’s Personal and Social Responsibility Institutional Inventory in the fall of 2007 to students, faculty, student affairs administrators, and academic administrators. The inventory is designed to identify where different groups on campus see opportunities exist to foster learning about personal and social responsibility and to serve as a catalyst for dialogues across the institution about ways to make such learning more pervasive.
Eventually the Leadership Consortium members will also be assessing whether students have acquired new capabilities in the five dimensions. Future events planned for the initiative include institutes, workshops, and campus dialogues. Throughout the initiative, AAC&U will also organize a series of open symposiums where the higher education community at large can explore how to promote ethical responsibilities to self and others.
Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility is supported by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
# # #
PHOTO CAPTION: From left, Sacred Heart University’s Provost, Dr. Thomas V. Forget; Caryn McTighe Musil, senior vice president at The Association of American Colleges and Universities; SHU President Dr. Anthony J. Cernera; and Dr. Michelle Loris, associate dean of SHU’s College of Arts and Sciences celebrate the AAC&U’s announcement that SHU has been chosen to participate in its national initiative, Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility.
About Sacred Heart University
Sacred Heart University, the second-largest Catholic university in New England, offers more than 40 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs on its main campus in Fairfield, Connecticut, and satellites in Connecticut, Luxembourg and Ireland. Approximately 5,800 students attend the University’s four colleges: Arts & Sciences; Education & Health Professions; University College; and the AACSB-accredited John F. (Jack) Welch College of Business. The Princeton Review includes SHU in its, “Best 366 Colleges: 2008,” U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges 2007” ranks SHU in the top tier of Master’s Universities in the Northeast, and Intel rates it #11 among the nation’s most “unwired” campuses. SHU fields 32 division I athletic teams, and has an award-winning program of community service. www.sacredheart.edu
For additional Sacred Heart University news, please visit http://www.sacredheart.edu/pressroom.cfm.
AAC&U is the leading national association concerned with the quality, vitality, and public standing of undergraduate liberal education. Its members are committed to extending the advantages of a liberal education to all students, regardless of academic specialization or intended career. Founded in 1915, AAC&U now comprises more than 1,100 accredited public and private colleges and universities of every type and size. AAC&U functions as a catalyst and facilitator, forging links among presidents, administrators, and faculty members who are engaged in institutional and curricular planning. Its mission is to reinforce the collective commitment to liberal education at both the national and local levels and to help individual institutions keep the quality of student learning at the core of their work as they evolve to meet new economic and social challenges. Information about AAC&U membership, programs, and publications can be found at www.aacu.org.
The mission of the John Templeton Foundation is to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life’s biggest questions. These questions range from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity. Also recognizing the importance of character and virtue toward building a free society, the Foundation supports a broad spectrum of programs, publications and studies that promote character education from childhood through young adulthood and beyond. Our vision is derived from John Templeton’s commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. The Foundation’s motto “How little we know, how eager to learn” exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries. Information about the John Templeton Foundation can be found at www.templeton.org.
Previous Page Back to April 2007 Next Page