Learning
Encourage a lifelong sense of wonder by providing educational experiences essential for living intellectually curious, personally fulfilling, and socially responsible lives.
We are committed to providing curricular, co-curricular, and experiential learning opportunities where students can practice and refine essential skills needed for successful careers and engaged lives as global citizens. We will highlight connections between classroom learning and workforce needs, ensuring our students are prepared to interact with a rapidly diversifying world. To encourage this hands-on learning, we will provide proactive student support, unambiguous communication, and intentional outreach.
Creating a sense of wonder is important not only for students, but also for UND employees. Faculty and staff should feel inspired and bring a sense of curiosity to their work; everyone should see themselves making a difference at UND. We will encourage UND employees to create new ideas, seek new skills, model creativity, and try new and innovative approaches to their work.
Learning at UND
"I believe the key to effective teaching begins with developing ongoing relationships with our students. By actively and passionately engaging students with narrative or storytelling lectures, I was able to model my lively sense of sociology imagination and inspire students to think critically about a wide range of social issues. During my entire career, I never forgot that teaching is a privilege, and our students were our greatest resource."
- Frank White, MA'88
Assistant Professor of Sociology, retired
Learning Strategic Objectives
UND leads by providing a sense of wonder through promoting a culture of exploration, discovery and real-life problem solving that helps students and UND employees develop their talents and showcase their skills. We will:
- Cultivate experiential learning opportunities with real-world applications, rewarding collaborations that are built on applied learning.
- Foster a global perspective to prepare students for engagement and leadership, by promoting experiences that expand horizons even as they build skills.
- Promote digital technologies for engaged learning and value-added opportunities for students, faculty, staff, alumni and collaborators.
- Serve the whole student with foundational learning opportunities that support their growth and creativity. Promote core competencies of life skills, including the abilities to set and achieve goals, work on a team, and make responsible choices.
- Enhance physical and virtual learning spaces to ensure faculty and students have the tools and resources necessary for productive and enriching educational experiences.
- Expand individualized advising and mentoring, to help students see how skills can be transferred across courses and extra-curriculars. Provide opportunities for students to document learning, showcase their work and disseminate research and ideas.
- Infuse dynamic learning approaches, environments and student-centered pedagogy (e.g. competency-based, project-based, high impact practices, etc.) in the core curriculum. Enhance the goals of fostering creative expression, critical inquiry, and interdisciplinary learning.
- Create more pathways to certificate or degree attainment for students of all ages, incomes and backgrounds.
- Provide credit and non-credit learning opportunities for campus and online students, UND employees, alumni and community members through innovative programming, rural and urban community outreach, and cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaborations.
