COLLEGE OF PUBLIC AND COMMUNITY SERVICE — CURRICULA
Directed Study
Individual students or small groups may wish to pursue an area of study outside of a structured class or project. CPCS provides the directed study option for these students. Typically, students would identify a competency or competencies they want to work on and coordinate with a faculty evaluator to develop a learning and demonstration plan for completing the competency. This is an excellent learning option for students who bring prior knowledge or experience in certain areas of the curriculum who want to build on that knowledge. It also extends the learning options for students who may wish to explore certain topics that are not addressed through organized learning activities in a given semester.
Evaluation of Prior Learning
At CPCS, students with relevant prior experience may use that experience toward demonstration of competencies in the curriculum. Students who have experience that is consistent with the learning outcomes in a competency, may work with a faculty evaluator to demonstrate what they have done, what they have learned, and how it relates to the competency. Prior learning may
also be used to get you partway through the demonstration of a competency. Then you can work with the evaluator to determine what new or additional learning you need to take on to get you the rest of the way.
Distribution Requirements
The undergraduate curriculum is organized around four overarching learning outcomes:
- Language and technical skills necessary for purposeful inquiry and communication
- Professional competence to function effectively in a broad range of workplace and community-based roles and activities
- Critical consciousness needed to clarify and challenge prevailing values, ideologies, and practices
- Essential knowledge required for participating fully in society
In working toward meeting these overall learning outcomes and earning a degree, CPCS students are required to complete 40 (3 credit equivalent) competencies. The curriculum is organized into four developmental levels, with competencies at each successive level demanding more complex intellectual tasks. At each level students are provided multiple opportunities to develop and apply appropriate academics and practice-oriented skills. The forty competencies are clustered around three main curricular categories:
Core Knowledge and Skills: Essential Tools for Change
The Core Knowledge and Skills area of the curriculum covers a wide range of skills and knowledge, including: critical thinking and argument; critical understanding of social issues and institutions, and developing the tools to understand and impact communities, institutions, and the democratic process. In demonstrating these competencies students will hae the opportunity to deepen their understanding of culture and cultural influences, history, economics, and policy development. The intent of the Core Knowledge and Skills area is to ensure that students master the essential academic tools—how to analyze, advocate, critique, and evaluate. Of equal importance, the aim is to engage students with the most pressing issues of out times as they are developing these skills.
Students are required to complete 29 competencies in the Core Knowledge and Skills area. The competencies are organized in four levels culminating in a Capstone competency. The levels ensure that students build toward mastery of the essential academic tools—how to analyze, advocate, critique, and evaluate—by working with increasingly complex tasks at higher levels of abstraction and independent thinking. While the competencies in this area define the skills and intellectual tasks that are required, students have a good deal of flexibility and choice in selecting the content the apply to the different competencies.
Major/Concentration
The major consists of 10 competencies. The 10 competencies are comprised of 6 competencies from a foundational major and 4 competencies from a concentration (an area of specialization that a student links to a major). For example: A student majoring in Human Services interested in working with adolescents may choose to link her major with Youth Work. Another student majoring in Human Services interested in managing a non-profit organization may choose to major in Human Services with a concentration in Management. This combination approach allows students maximum flexibility in designing a major that is best-suited to their learning and career goals, and offers them a range of opportunities to tailor their learning in directions that make sense for them.
Writing Portfolio: Applied Communications Competency
Employers and graduate schools alike point to effective communication skills as an essential qualification that they seek from college graduates. CPCS takes this demand seriously and places a strong emphasis on the development and demonstration of effective oral and written communication skills as a central part of our curriculum. The development of writing, speaking, and presentation skills are interwoven into most of the competencies students work on at CPCS. Using an approach called Writing Across the Curriculum, students are given multiple opportunities to focus on the development of these different skills and to apple they in different contexts. Students are required to compile a portfolio of products that represent their best writing and other presentations for evaluation of these skills.
The Learning Plan
Requirements for graduation are mapped out in what is called a “learning plan.” This plans lists the competencies that a student is required to complete at CPCS and serves as a student’s road map through the requirements and options in the curriculum.
The Learning Plan follows a developmental framework in which skills build on each other as a student progresses to higher levels. Students have several options for demonstrating each competency in the learning plan. Instruction in reading, writing, speaking, computers, and quantitative reasoning are integrated throughout the curriculum to assist students in meeting the Portfolio requirements.