Critical and Creative Thinking

Critical and creative thinking are the necessary thought processes of an effective thinker who uses divergent and convergent thought patterns to arrive at an appropriate conclusion in a given situation. This objective cultivates students’ skills in reaching conclusions founded on their examination of a variety of authorities within and across various disciplines and with engaging in innovation and risk taking.

Critical thinking is a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion. Students develop an appreciation of the complexities and nuances of problems under investigation by examining the historical, social, and political contexts in which the problem emerged. Core competencies include: explanation of issues, evidence, influence of context and assumptions, student’s position, and conclusions and related outcomes.

Advanced-level indicators are:

• Issue/problem to be considered critically is stated clearly and described comprehensively, delivering all relevant information necessary for full understanding.
• Information is taken from source(s) with enough interpretation/evaluation to develop a comprehensive analysis or synthesis.
• Viewpoints of experts are questioned thoroughly.
• Thoroughly (systematically and methodically) analyzes own and others’ assumptions and carefully evaluates the relevance of contexts when presenting a position.
• Specific position (perspective/thesis) is imaginative, taking into account complexities of an issue.
• Limits of position (perspective/thesis) are acknowledged.
• Others’ points of view are synthesized within position (perspective/thesis).
• Conclusions and related outcomes (consequences and implications) are logical and reflect student’s informed evaluation and placement of evidence and perspectives discussed in priority order.

Creative thinking is both the capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking. Core competencies include: acquiring domain-specific skills, taking risks, solving problems, embracing contradictions, and innovative thinking.

Advanced-level indicators are:

• Evaluates creative process and product using domain-appropriate criteria.
• Actively seeks out and follows through on untested and potentially risky directions or approaches to the assignment in the final product.
• Not only develops a logical, consistent plan to solve problem, but recognizes consequences of solution and can articulate reason for choosing solution.
• Integrates alternate, divergent, or contradictory perspectives or ideas fully.
• Extends a novel or unique idea, question, format, or product to create new knowledge or knowledge that crosses boundaries. Transforms ideas or solutions into entirely new forms.

Effective Communication

Communication is the co-creation of meaning focusing on how people use content to generate understanding within and across various contexts, cultures, channels, and media. It always includes a communicator, an audience, a subject, and a situation. Effective communicators create a purposeful message designed to increase knowledge, to foster understanding, or to promote change in the listeners’ attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors. Effective communicators understand their own style and the necessity of adapting that style to the needs of their audience, as the goal of communication is shared meaning.

Written communication is the development and expression of ideas in writing. Written communication involves learning to work in many genres and styles, and using different technologies, and mixing texts, data, and images. Written communication abilities develop through iterative experiences across the curriculum. Core competencies include: context and purpose of writing, content development, genre and disciplinary conventions, sources and evidence, and control of syntax and mechanics.  

Advanced-level indicators are:

• Demonstrates a thorough understanding of context, audience, and purpose that is responsive to the assigned task(s) and focuses all elements of the work.
• Uses appropriate, relevant, and compelling content to illustrate mastery of the subject, conveying the writer’s understanding, and shaping the whole work.
• Demonstrates detailed attention to and successful execution of a wide range of conventions particular to a specific discipline and/or writing task(s) including organization, content, presentation, formatting, and stylistic choices.
• Demonstrates skillful use of high-quality, credible, relevant sources to develop ideas that are appropriate for the discipline and genre of the writing.
• Uses graceful language that skillfully communicates meaning to readers with clarity and fluency, and is virtually error-free.

Oral communication is a prepared, purposeful presentation designed to increase knowledge, to foster understanding, or to promote change in the listeners’ attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors. Core competencies include: central message, organization, language, delivery, and supporting material.

Advanced-level indicators are:

• Central message is compelling (precisely stated, appropriately repeated, memorable, and strongly supported.)
• Organizational pattern (specific introduction and conclusion, sequenced material within the body, and transitions) is clearly and consistently observable and is skillful and makes the content of the presentation cohesive.
• Language choices are imaginative, memorable, and compelling, and enhance the effectiveness of the presentation. Language in presentation is appropriate to audience.
• Delivery techniques (posture, gesture, eye contact, and vocal expressiveness) make the presentation compelling, and speaker appears polished and confident.
• A variety of types of supporting materials (explanations, examples, illustrations, statistics, analogies, quotations from relevant authorities) make appropriate reference to information or analysis that significantly supports the presentation or establishes the presenter’s credibility/authority on the topic.

Global & Intercultural Awareness

Global & Intercultural Awareness is a collection of skills that promote effective interaction in a variety of cultural contexts. Global awareness is an understanding of the interconnections between nations, socio-cultural groups, individuals, and the elements that influence them. Intercultural awareness is knowledge of and sensitivity to diversity in all its forms, including the variety of factors that shape culture including worldview, communication, cultural rules, and personal biases. Core competencies include: global awareness, cultural worldviews, diversity, communication, and cultural openness.

Advanced-level indicators are:

• Demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the interconnections between nations, socio-cultural groups, individuals, and the elements that influence them (influential elements include economy, political decision-making, ideology, environment, and technology).
• Demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the complexity of elements important to members of another culture (elements important to another culture include its history, values, politics, economy, communication styles, beliefs, traditions, and practices).
• Demonstrates evidence of adjustment in own attitudes and beliefs because of working within and learning from diversity of communities and cultures. Promotes others’ engagement with diversity (the recognition of differences and commonalities among people including: nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, culture, cognitive ability, life experiences, and sexual orientation).
• Articulates a complex understanding of cultural differences in verbal and nonverbal communication and is able to skillfully negotiate a shared understanding based on those differences (e.g., degree to which people use physical contact while communicating in different cultures or use direct/indirect and explicit/implicit meanings).
• Articulates insights into own cultural rules and personal biases. Initiates and develops interactions with culturally different others. Suspends judgment in valuing interactions with culturally different others.

Holistic Personal Development

Holistic personal development is the multifaceted process of becoming self-actualized. It involves all aspects of the self including the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual and includes taking personal responsibility for one’s own learning and development through a process of assessment, reflection, and action. Adult learning and personal development are interrelated experiences as learning promotes development, while development encourages further learning.  Core competencies include: self-awareness, integrity, reflection, personal accountability, and ethical analysis and behavior.

Advanced-level indicators include:

• Analyzes both core beliefs and the origins of the core beliefs leading to greater depth and clarity. Consistently explores physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of self.
• Consistently demonstrates alignment between personal values, words and actions. Always acts with integrity.
• Envisions and articulates a future self, building on past experiences that have occurred across multiple and diverse contexts.
• Designs and implements a plan to move into that vision.
• Consistently takes responsibility for personal actions and own response to experiences. Rather than blame others, consistently seeks to understand own contribution to aid further growth.
• Student can recognize ethical issues when presented in a complex, multilayered (gray) context and can recognize cross-relationships among the issues. Consistently engages in ethical behavior.

Competence for Professional Pursuits

Competence for professional pursuits is an understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences to synthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations beyond the classroom into a professional field. Students explore the central knowledge, skills, and professional conduct of their chosen field or profession to prepare for engagement in meaningful and socially responsible work. Core competencies include: connections to experience, knowledge of discipline, synthesis, transfer, and professionalism.

Advanced-level indicators are:

• Meaningfully synthesizes connections among experiences outside of the formal classroom (including life experiences and academic experiences such as internships) to deepen understanding of fields of study and broaden own points of view.
• Demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the theories/ concepts/frameworks core to the field of study. Demonstrates advanced level competence of skills/practices core to the field of study.
• Independently creates wholes out of multiple parts (synthesizes) or draws conclusions by combining examples, facts, or theories from more than one field of study or perspective.
• Adapts and applies, independently, skills, abilities, theories, or methodologies gained in one situation to new situations to solve difficult problems or explore complex issues in original ways.
• Consistently demonstrates professionalism (e.g., punctual, attentive to detail, considerate) in academic work and conduct.

Praxis for Social Justice

Praxis for social justice combines learning and doing for the purpose of encouraging critical consciousness, ethical reasoning, and socially responsible behavior through civic engagement. This objective advances critical awareness of the social, economic, political, and environmental justice issues that demarcate the terrain of power, oppression, and resistance. Praxis for social justice includes developing the commitment, skills, and knowledge necessary to contribute to the on-going work for justice through activism and engagement that embraces local and global communities. Core competencies include: analysis of power and oppression, extension of knowledge, understanding of intersectionality, civic identity and commitment, social action and reflection.

Advanced-level indicators include:

• Demonstrates sophisticated understanding of power, oppression and resistance and the interconnections between social, economic, political and environmental justice.
• Connects and extends knowledge (facts, theories, etc.) from one’s own academic study to civic engagement and to one’s own participation in civic life, politics, and social justice work. Seeks out and attends to underrepresented voices.
• Demonstrates sophisticated understanding of the diversity of communities and cultures, frequently drawing connections between different forms of oppression (e.g., the locus of multiple identities such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.).
• Provides evidence of experience in civic-engagement activities and describes what she/he has learned about her or himself as it relates to a reinforced and clarified sense of civic identity and continued commitment to the social good.
• Demonstrates independent experience and shows initiative in team leadership of complex or multiple civic engagement activities, accompanied by reflective insights or analysis about the aims and accomplishments of one’s actions.