Select any part of the diagram to read more — including the Virtues at its center.
Our implementation strategy rests on three pillars that lead to a single path: students cultivate the virtues of the disciplines they study, test them against diverse perspectives, and carry them into life beyond the classroom. Together, the pillars give faculty and staff a common structure for building virtue into their work:
Student development capacities are the psychological and behavioral processes — such as self-regulation, resilience, and motivation — that support student success and make virtue development possible. Our model identifies four categories of student development capacities:
General Education Competencies are Austin Community College’s rendition of Texas’s core objectives for general education. Each represents a key area of student development not only for academic preparedness and success, but for achieving the core characteristics that foster a good life, and ultimately reinforce and are supported by broader character development.
Because the general education core curriculum is defined by the state of Texas as coursework “necessary to prepare students for civic and professional life” and that equips “students for participation in the workforce and in the betterment of society,” it provides an ideal focal point for character education within the community college context. The general education curriculum is organized into subject areas that group disciplines, academic traditions that provide the context to develop intellectual, moral, and civic virtues, as well as performance strengths.
Character is never formed in the classroom alone. Every office a student encounters should answer one question: how does what we do develop the whole person? A student’s entire experience of ACC, not just the time spent in class, should point toward the cultivation of virtue. Our college offices and centers map onto four domains, all oriented toward the virtues at our model’s core:
Quality assessment provides a built-in continual feedback loop for revision and growth, where data is collected from a variety of sources to gain a holistic and formative understanding of our model at work and to create a better experience for students and faculty. This includes:
Because these virtues are necessary for the pursuit of truth and the good life, it is essential that undergraduates continue to develop them early on in their required general education coursework and that they inform the work of the college.
Because these virtues are necessary for the pursuit of truth and the good life, it is essential that undergraduates continue to develop them early on in their required general education coursework and that they inform the work of the college.
Student development capacities are the psychological and behavioral processes – such as self-regulation, resilience, and motivation – that support student success and make virtue development possible. Our model identifies four categories of student development capacities:
General Education Competencies are Austin Community College’s rendition of Texas’s core objectives for general education. Each represents a key area of student development not only for academic preparedness and success, but for achieving the core characteristics that foster a good life, and ultimately reinforce and are supported by broader character development.
Because the general education core curriculum is defined by the state of Texas as coursework “necessary to prepare students for civic and professional life” and that equips “students for participation in the workforce and in the betterment of society,” it provides an ideal focal point for character education within the community college context. The general education curriculum is organized into subject areas that group disciplines, academic traditions that provide the context to develop intellectual, moral, and civic virtues, as well as performance strengths.
Quality assessment provides a built-in continual feedback loop for revision and growth, where data is collected from a variety of sources to gain a holistic and formative understanding of our model at work and to create a better experience for students and faculty.
This includes:
Our implementation strategy rests on three pillars that lead to a single path: students cultivate the virtues of the disciplines they study, test them against diverse perspectives, and carry them into life beyond the classroom. Together, the pillars give faculty and staff a common structure for building virtue into their work:
Character is never formed in the classroom alone. Every office a student encounters should answer one question: how does what we do develop the whole person? A student’s entire experience of ACC, not just the time spent in class, should point toward the cultivation of virtue. Our college offices and centers map onto four domains, all oriented toward the virtues at our model’s core:
