A List
2/12/07

SLU PART OF 'PERSONAL & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY' PROJECT

CANTON - St. Lawrence University is one of 18 institutions chosen by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) to participate in its Core Commitments Leadership Consortium. The schools will lead the first phase of a national initiative, Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility, which seeks to deepen students' sense of integrity, ethical obligations to self and to others, and responsibilities as citizens in a diverse democracy and interdependent world.

St. Lawrence will match a $25,000 AAC&U grant award to develop the program over the next two years.

"The selected colleges and universities are already promising leaders in encouraging and incorporating personal and social responsibility into the undergraduate curriculum," AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider said. "Too often, there is a disconnect between student life on campus and students' academic studies, isolating values, ethics and civic responsibilities from what is learned in the classroom."

The goal is to incorporate those principles into the foundation of undergraduates' experience.

Other selected institutions are: Babson College, MA; Bowling Green State University, OH; California State University-Northridge, CA; Concordia College-Moorhead, MN; Miami University, OH; Michigan State University, MI; Middlesex Community College, MA; Oakland Community College, MI; Rollins College, FL; Saint Mary's College of California, CA; Tulane University, LA; United States Air Force Academy, CO; University of Alabama Birmingham, AL; University of Central Florida, FL; University of the Pacific, CA; Wagner College, NY; and Winthrop University, SC.

The 18 participating institutions were selected both on the basis of work already accomplished in the spirit of Core Commitments and on an articulated plan to deepen and extend that work on campus. As part of their plans, campus leadership teams will administer a new Personal and Social Responsibility Institutional Inventory to students, faculty, student affairs administrators and academic administrators to measure the impact of existing campus efforts. The results will be used to shape future work at each institution and across the consortium.

For more information on the initiative, please visit the AAC&U Core Commitments Web site.

Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility is supported by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

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