The cumulative effect of these and other programs has been positive. Rollins ranks significantly higher than other colleges and universities on the NSSE question regarding whether students have had serious conversations with students from a racial or ethnic group different than their own, and it rates three standard deviations above other colleges and universities on the question of whether students have had serious conversations with students who hold religious, political, or personal beliefs different from theirs. Our seniors also score significantly higher on having tried to understand another person's point of view by imagining how the issue would look from that person's perspective.

Cultivating Personal and Academic Integrity

To extend our work in this core area, we made “Academic and Social Integrity” one of the fundamental elements of our QEP. Capping three years of discussion among faculty, students, and administrators, Rollins adopted an Academic Honor Code last spring. An important part of that Code is to educate the community about the idea of integrity and its fundamental importance for a community. In educating students about integrity, we emphasize the creation of a values flag within each first-year seminar. After discussing integrity and other values fundamental to the academy, the group creates a flag expressing their values and higher selves. The flags are displayed during the rest of orientation week, then sewn together and re-presented to the class at a special Integrity Convocation and again at their graduation ceremony four years later.

During the first year of college, students' values are integrated into and shaped by the culture of the communities in which they live. In creating Living-Learning Communities (LLCs) four years ago based on our first-year seminars, we emphasized the role of values formation in both the classes that we selected as LLCs and the residence hall programming. In four years the number of LLCs has increased to incorporate half of our first-year students. We have found substantial outcome differences between LLC and non-LLC students. To a significant degree, LLC students are more able to see multiple sides of an issue, can better identify solutions to complex problems, have moderated alcohol consumption, and have more highly developed decision-making skills. Next year, to increase programming about personal responsibility, a faculty member will live in a new apartment in the residence hall that houses many of our LLCs.

Developing Competencies in Ethical and Moral Reasoning

One of the three Core Competencies defined in the strategic plan leading to our recent reaccreditation process was “ability to identify and articulate ethical dimensions of a personal or social issue.” Rollins' 1979 introduction of the Values and Decision Making curricular requirement was an innovative approach to developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning, and we received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to support the requirement and disseminate it nationally. Students fulfill the general education requirement in courses throughout the curriculum, in virtually every department. To teach these courses, faculty are trained in workshops to identify ethical situations posed by material in various disciplines, and learn pedagogical approaches to teach students to: 1) identify the moral or ethical dimensions of social or personal issues; 2) articulate the moral principles that can be used to solve the ethical issue; and 3) evaluate the moral or ethical decision reached (by them and others). Thus, for 27 years, we have focused on developing competencies in ethical and moral reasoning through the curriculum, as perhaps the most distinctive element in our curriculum.

Strive For Excellence

Rollins unquestionably strives for excellence. Over the past 15 years we have moved from number 6 to number 1 in our category of the U.S. News & World Report rankings, standing ahead of such schools as James Madison University and Elon University . The focus of this core competency, however, is not on institutional excellence but on developing a strong work ethic and doing the best one can in college. We do not have many direct indications of this quality. Indirect indicators come from several sources. Our NSSE data tell us that strengths at Rollins relate to academic and intellectual experiences. The College Student Survey (CSS) suggests that, compared to their peers, Rollins seniors are more likely to participate in leadership training; develop leadership abilities, interpersonal skills, and understanding of others; understand the problems facing their community and social problems facing our nation; influence social values; keep abreast of political affairs, and agree more strongly that colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus. Rollins seniors also report that more of their courses required community service/service learning.

Recent national reports indicate that this year's first-year college students display some worrisome traits. They have several of the same characteristics as other Millennial students, but, by some informal accounts from faculty across the nation, these new students also seem unusually unmotivated – even defiant, by some descriptions. Even in classrooms employing engaged pedagogy, students seem to display detachment, non-responsiveness, failure to understand consequences of their actions. This situation demands the Striving for Excellence core responsibility be brought to the forefront nationally and addressed in new and creative ways. Faculty have always assumed that if we taught well, students would naturally be motivated and try their best. This may no longer be the case in an age of helicopter parents who may have paralyzed their children. We look forward to focusing on this core responsibility and extending and consolidating our work in the other areas.

Assessment

Rollins has committed to assessing all of its programs to produce quality improvement; we use national instruments as well as create our own. Examples of assessment are available at http://www.rollins.edu/deanoffaculty/Institutional_Effectiveness.pdf . We are deeply committed to and aggressively assessing students' knowledge, skills, and values in each experience (academic and co- curricular) that teaches, employs and empowers those involved in global citizenship and responsible leadership.

The Rollins Citizenship Program

This is a unique time in Rollins' history. Several converging factors make the next years pivotal for our future. The faculty has deemed curriculum reform its top priority, and new academic and student affairs deans will be poised to cooperate in creating a seamless, intentional program spanning both functional areas to promote Rollins' mission of educating for global citizenship and responsible leadership. A significant cadre of new, creative faculty is eager to put their stamp on the college. Rollins' endowment has quadrupled over the last 10 years, so we have resources to improve our existing programs and reinvent ourselves with new programming. Finally, our College mission and our QEP, both recently approved, focus on global citizenship and responsible leadership. In our long-standing Deweyian tradition of emphasizing the practical liberal arts to prepare students for active citizenship, we have committed ourselves to the five core responsibilities. Additionally, although we have made great progress in many of the areas, through our curricular discussion we want to create a coherent, intentional, and focused Rollins Citizenship Program, all the components of which conspire (in the sense of the Latin derivative) and reinforce each other to produce liberally educated citizens for the 21 st century.

Discussions among faculty, staff, and students have already produced several initiatives that, along with previous ones, we want to incorporate into a Rollins Citizenship Program in our curriculum revision. Discussions with Consortium partners will improve and add to our ideas, which will benefit us greatly, but we have discussed adding to the initiatives listed above to include the following projects:

•  Completing a Social Honor Code – Creating the Academic Honor Code took three years of discussion, not simply to work through difficult issues but also to begin the educational process of incorporating integrity into the social fabric of daily life. We have already spent a year talking about a Social Honor Code, one which does not list infractions but encourages students to practice integrity in all aspects of their social life and understand the reasons for doing this.

•  Creating the Cultural Explorations Program – This will entail a graduation requirement (to complete a certain number of activities each year), challenging students to participate in the community – on campus, by attending cultural events such as talks, theatre productions, discussion groups; and off-campus, individually or in groups – to develop their sense of community responsibility. Many alternatives will be available for fulfilling this requirement – again encouraging thoughtful choice and commitment in citizenship.

•  The Purposeful Life Program – We already have a fine first-year program that transitions students into college through the first semester, but students are left with little intentional guidance thereafter. This program would work with the students through the next two semesters. The second semester of the first year would focus on social and psychological capabilities: enhancing social and personal efficacy, promoting emotional well-being, assessing students' strengths, building relationships, and creating resiliency.

The program would also prepare first-semester sophomores to continue to reflect on themselves in the wider context of defining the important values in their lives, and to become articulate in expressing their life goals. Church-related colleges often strive to bring students into a larger religious context to help them make sense of their lives, but students at secular liberal arts colleges also need to think of their lives being based on values and purposes that make sense to them, whether they be religious or not. These existential questions can bring focus and energy to engaged citizenship when students see themselves as part of a larger context that incorporates commitments and responsibilities beyond themselves in a purposeful life.

Based on the personal assessments in these two programs of their talents, values and commitments, students would be asked to make intentional decisions about the classes they choose, the leadership positions they take, and the social choices they make – all to focus their development into good citizens based on their talents and strengths. In turn, they will commit themselves to excellence in their lives as part of a purposeful life.

•  Coupling our Values Requirement with Community Engagement – Currently, our Values Requirement focuses on teaching students the skills involved in decision making within ethical contexts in classes across the curriculum. While this approach correctly contextualizes ethical discussions, often situations discussed are abstract or are distant to the student, and too often the decision-making becomes merely an academic exercise. We propose focusing this general education requirement in living contexts, attaching the requirement to courses that have a significant service-learning component. Introducing students to people in social (and personal) situations in which ethical questions arise not only makes discussions more real but also makes clear that communities must face the issues found within them. In values-based community engagement, leadership and service truly go hand-in-hand, producing responsible leadership.

•  The Greek Initiative – On too many campuses, Greek organizations, contrary to their charters, encourage high-risk behaviors and place their service requirements in the category of something that must be done to keep their houses. For two years, students at Rollins have engaged with a few faculty and staff in a student-developed initiative to make Greek organizations more responsible. The initiative has foundered due to lack of appropriate leadership and failure to place it within the larger context of responsible citizenship. Given our commitment to create an intentional, seamless set of programs to focus on citizenship through developing the core responsibilities, we will incorporate the Greek Initiative into this larger context. Rollins has committed itself to hire a full-time Director of Greek life who would work within Student Involvement and Leadership. Further, faculty would commit to mentor the groups. We recognize that we cannot make progress unless we develop a program spanning Student Life and Academic Affairs.

•  Innovative Structures – To help create seamless programs, we will expand recent practice of “sharing” personnel between Academic and Student Affairs, expanding relationships such as the Office of Community Engagement reporting to Academic Affairs yet being physically located in Student Affairs, and hiring a Director of First-Year Programs to work in both divisions.

Conclusion

Rollins has the tradition of promoting practical liberal education in John Dewey's legacy of educating students for citizenship in a democracy. Many of our programs promote this objective and, in turn, emphasize the five core responsibilities. At present, because of our fundamental curriculum review and two new deans committed to this vision, Rollins is poised to develop a more intentional and seamless program in the students' academic and co-curricular lives that develops good citizens, emphasizing the responsibilities that good citizenship requires. We have the faculty and staff commitment and the resources for this project, and we believe Rollins would both contribute significantly to and benefit greatly from the Core Commitments Leadership Consortium. We want to create an innovate program such as the Rollins Citizenship Program, focused on citizenship and the core responsibilities, that will fulfill our mission and become a model for others.