The Ideals Underlying an IUPUI Undergraduate Education

Principles of Undergraduate Learning

The Principles of Undergraduate Learning are the essential ingredients of the undergraduate educational experience at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. These principles form a conceptual framework for all students’ general education but necessarily permeate the curriculum in the major field of study as well. Other specific expectations for IUPUI’s graduates are determined by the faculty in a student’s major field of study. Together, these expectations speak to what graduates of IUPUI will know and what they will be able to do upon completion of their degree.

Core Communication and Quantitative Skills

[Definition:] The ability of students to write, read, speak and listen, perform quantitative analysis, and use information resources and technology—the foundation skills necessary for all IUPUI students to succeed. [Outcomes:] This set of skills is demonstrated, respectively, by the ability to:
  1. express ideas and facts to others effectively in a variety of written formats,
  2. comprehend, interpret, and analyze texts,
  3. communicate orally in one-on-one and group settings,
  4. solve problems that are quantitative in nature,
  5. to make efficient use of information resources and technology for personal and professional needs

Critical Thinking

[Definition:] The ability of students to analyze carefully and logically information and ideas from multiple perspectives. [Outcomes:] This skill is demonstrated by the ability of students to
  1. analyze complex issues and make informed decisions,
  2. synthesize information in order to arrive at reasoned conclusions,
  3. evaluate the logic, validity, and relevance of data,
  4. solve challenging problems, and
  5. use knowledge and understanding to generate and explore new questions

Integration and Application of Knowledge

[Definition:] The ability of students to use information and concepts from studies in multiple disciplines in their intellectual, professional, and community lives. [Outcomes:] This skill is demonstrated by the ability of students to apply knowledge to:
  1. enhance their personal lives,
  2. meet professional standards and competencies,
  3. further the goals of society

Intellectual Depth, Breadth, and Adaptiveness

[Definition:] The ability of students to examine and organize disciplinary ways of knowing and to apply them to specific issues and problems. [Outcomes:]
  1. Intellectual depth describes the demonstration of substantial knowledge and understanding of at least one field of study,
  2. intellectual breadth is demonstrated by the ability to compare and contrast approaches to knowledge in different disciplines,
  3. adaptiveness is demonstrated by the ability to modify one’s approach to an issue or problem based on the contexts and requirements of particular situations

Understanding Society and Culture

[Definition:] The ability of students to recognize their own cultural traditions and to understand and appreciate the diversity of the human experience, both within the United States and internationally. [Outcomes:] This skill is demonstrated by the ability to:
  1. compare and contrast the range of diversity and universality in human history, societies, and ways of life,
  2. analyze and understand the interconnectedness of global and local concerns,
  3. operate with civility in a complex social world

Values and Ethics

[Definition:] The ability of students to make judgments with respect to individual conduct, citizenship, and aesthetics. [Outcomes:] A sense of values and ethics is demonstrated by the ability of students to:
  1. make informed and principled choices regarding conflicting situations in their personal and public lives and to foresee the consequences of these choices,
  2. recognize the importance of aesthetics in their personal lives and in society

Active Learning: Research and Apprenticeships

IUPUI, like older universities, is a repository for theoretical or pure knowledge, a focal point for its transmission, a place for generating and critiquing new knowledge. And IUPUI, like other new urban universities, simultaneously has a special interest in applied knowledge because of its intimate ties with its community. This interest in applied knowledge is strengthened at IUPUI by the presence of its numerous and outstanding professional schools as well as the land grant tradition stemming from IUPUI’s Purdue schools. Land grant universities were created to assist the citizens of the state with their day-to-day problems. IUPUI has already achieved a strong record in generating new theoretical knowledge and an equally impressive record in addressing issues of an applied nature; that is, taking knowledge from the classroom, the library, and the laboratory into the world of business, into health facilities, into governmental offices and neighborhoods, to the zoo, and to K through 12 schools.

At IUPUI, these dual missions touch the lives of all undergraduate students. In a sense, IUPUI is reversing a pattern in higher education. In the nineteenth century, when universities moved from primarily transmitting knowledge to actively pursuing and creating knowledge, undergraduates regularly worked alongside faculty. However, with the development of graduate and professional programs and the explosion of knowledge, undergraduates increasingly were excluded from the front lines of research to more restricted roles as receivers of existing knowledge.

IUPUI, for most of its history, has reversed this pattern by re-involving undergraduates in research and first-hand experiential learning. Perhaps this happened because of the large number of adult undergraduate students with professional-level skills, if not degrees, that were so much a part of the early IU and PU extension centers that formed the heart of IUPUI’s undergraduate programs. Perhaps it was because the professional schools retained their concepts of apprenticeships, although they rarely use that term. Regardless of the origins of the concept, however, IUPUI believes that undergraduates should participate in research and apply classroom knowledge in the real world as a test of its validity.

Most undergraduate programs include research or internship/co-op/practicum components or both. Also, the campus has for over 15 years funded opportunities for research work, which is open to all undergraduates and described elsewhere in this bulletin.

Linkages

Research shows that students who are involved in and informed about their college tend to be more successful in greater numbers than students who don’t develop ties to the larger community. Orientation is the first way that IUPUI shows students how their academic and private lives link with their lives as campus citizens. Orientation describes the numerous clubs and student service organizations in place to help students and explains the business of IUPUI, which is to teach, research, and serve. The discussions begun in orientation are taken up in the first-year seminars. These credit classes for beginning students, also referred to as learning communities, are small classes with a team of facilitators including a full-time faculty member, an advisor, a librarian, and a student mentor. A major focus of these courses is to link students to the campus in a variety of ways.

At IUPUI, students encounter the pervasive theme of service to society. This emphasis in part reflects the presence of the Center for Philanthropy, which includes a world-renowned fund-raising school that trains nonprofit organizations. The center’s presence has focused the campus on service and led to the development of undergraduate and graduate courses on numerous aspects of philanthropy. Service learning components are part of a wide array of classes (See “Service Learning” elsewhere in this bulletin), and the campus conducts a strong annual United Way campaign, a Day of Caring that involves volunteer work by students, faculty, and staff, as well as growing volunteer efforts by student groups on the graduate and undergraduate levels. Such efforts include projects such as tutoring elementary school children, blood drives, gathering supplies for the victims of earthquakes, clean-up projects, and staffing clinics.

Civility

Chancellor Gerald Bepko best defined “civility” when he stated in a letter to the campus the following message:
“We often speak of IUPUI as being a family. Like members of a family, we have dedicated ourselves to creating an environment where individuals can succeed because each person is important. When any one of our members is prevented from doing her or his best, the entire community is diminished. We are also an institution of higher learning. Our institutional ethic compels us to foster the best possible environment for doing our work as educators, learners, and supporters of the educational process. Periodically, we must reaffirm these fundamental ethics and values that form the framework of our university family.

“Among those values is fostering a climate of civility and mutual respect regardless of race, gender, age, or status in this institution. IUPUI has achieved much of its promise as an urban university because we work together towards common ends. Because the university is so complex and diverse, however, we will not always agree with one another. When we disagree it must be done with civility. We encourage everyone to speak and act judiciously and with respect for one another.

“Also among our values is academic freedom and an open exchange of ideas and opinions. However, when there are messages displayed that promote divisiveness in our academic community, we have an obligation to condemn those messages as being antithetical to our university’s ideals and sense of shared responsibility for each other’s welfare. If we are to be true to our commitment to diversity and be welcoming to all, everyone must do his or her part. We know the terrible legacy of unopposed statements, they become insidiously acceptable and poison the climate of trust and respect we strive to maintain. When apathy leads us to permit discrimination or harassment because we ourselves are not objects of such behavior, we have failed our community.

“No set of rules or policies can wholly govern human conduct. Civility is a fragile construct that each of us must cherish and preserve. We do have policies designed to eliminate discrimination and to prevent harassment. Our Office of Affirmative Action enforces these policies and assists in educating the campus community about acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.”

The Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct also addresses the issues of civility and other conduct appropriate to being part of a university community.