Teaching, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Graduate Working Group History and Update

Multiple discussions in 2016-2017 with faculty, deans, and students revealed that despite a lot of shared interest in graduate and professional curricular integration across units, doing so involves a number of complexities that make it difficult.  Issues with the budgetary structure currently contribute to difficulty students, faculty, and programs face when attempting to take courses or tie curricula together, these were seen as more easily addressed than other underlying issues. There is clear commitment and interest in addressing these issues.  Other difficulties in graduate curricular integration include,  but are not limited to:

1. Graduate and professional programs often have less flexibility than exists in undergraduate curricula.  Accreditation standards, expectations of depth and breadth of specific types of training by future employers, and the work graduate students do outside of courses often mean graduate students have less time in their schedules to dedicate to courses outside their specific fields of study.  Increasing the number of courses a student takes can cause problems in time available for non-course experiences or could increase the time and money necessary to complete a program, both of which are problematic.  In addition, the need to offer particular courses can make it difficult for a unit to offer courses outside those required.
2. Given the greater expectation of foundational knowledge and pre-requisite skills in graduate courses, advanced interdisciplinary courses that also meet the educational needs of students are difficult to develop.
3. Lack of clear pathways: While individual students may create individual pathways that are interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary, there is not an overwhelming population of students pursuing specific pathways that could turn into a new concentration, certificate or master’s program

Despite these difficulties, there continues to be interest by many students and faculty in more cross-disciplinary or cross-unit graduate and professional opportunities.  Such opportunities may be more effectively created in more direct program –to-program discussions, in the development of specific tools or foci that would benefit students from multipole programs, or in the identification of more clear and standardized paths to support students who want some additional experiences.  Consideration of non-curricular opportunities is another area for exploration.  Much of this work is being continued by the Office of Academic Innovation. Please contact Jess Neumann if you would like to get involved in this area.

Special thank you to Danny McIntosh, Jennifer Karas, Dan Baack, Ryan Gildersleeve, Viva Moffat and Mary Clair Serewicz for their hard work in moving this area of focus forward.