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Dear Friend,
Though it has been more than forty years since I arrived as a freshman at UT Austin, I remember well my first days on the Forty Acres. To me, the back-to-school period has always been an interesting hybrid – an occasion to both celebrate tradition and acknowledge that in life, transition and change are constants. In this month’s message I would like to discuss some of the innovative steps we are taking to augment – not replace, but augment – the traditional college experience our universities are so good at delivering.
Texas’s student body consists, in increasingly large numbers, of the kinds of students that higher education has not always served well: low-income students, part-time students, students who work full time, and students who are family caregivers. We have a responsibility to smooth the road – both to a college degree and to a rewarding career – for these young people.
With that goal in mind, our Institute for Transformational Learning (established and endowed by the Board of Regents in 2012) has designed, and is working with campuses and faculty across the system to roll out, a series of competency-based degree programs in areas of high employment and student demand. In competency-based programs, students advance through courses, certifications and degrees based on their success mastering knowledge and skills rather than time spent in a classroom.
It’s certainly apt that the inaugural program will debut very shortly at the brand new UT Rio Grande Valley. The competency-based bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences, a centerpiece of UTRGV’s Middle School to Medical School program (M2M), will launch this fall. M2M, a collaboration between the medical school, the university and K-12 leaders, will engage students as early as middle school starting in the Fall of 2016. This bold initiative will create a realistic career path for students with an interest in biomedical sciences, while developing a larger pool of health professionals for a region that sorely needs them.
M2M is a true hybrid program, delivered both in the classroom and online, both in English and in Spanish. It features a unique core curriculum organized around the medical humanities, the history of medicine and public health, and health care policy. As with the other competency-based programs we will be introducing, M2M’s curriculum will included clearly defined learning objectives and competencies that students must master.
The on-campus elements of our competency-based programs are supplemented by a technology-enabled learning experience that goes far beyond most people’s ideas of “online learning,” and includes advanced simulations, sophisticated interactives, and virtual laboratories. Rather than something a student does in isolation, the program emphasizes active learning and robust social interaction with faculty and other students.
To some, an online learning experience may seem detached or impersonal. But with M2M and our other new programs, the truth is the exact opposite. Because no two students learn exactly the same way, or at the exact same pace, we have invested in digital tools that create a highly personalized learning experience – one that actually increases a student’s opportunity to get timely feedback, guidance and support from faculty, coaches and advisors. Dashboards give students up-to-the-minute reports on their progress, and with a single click, they can get just-in-time assistance. Faculty are able to see if students are falling behind, and intervene as necessary to get them back on track.
While our competency-based programs are intentionally designed to prepare students for a career, the learning experience is not narrowly vocational. When a student graduates from any one of our institutions, we want him or her to have a broad understanding of the world, and rest assured, graduates of M2M and our other new programs will have that.
There will always be a place at our institutions for what H.T. Parlin – founder of UT Austin’s Plan II Honors, one of the country’s premier liberal arts programs – called “disinterested enlightenment.” The value of learning for its own sake, without regard to career, is a core principle we will never abandon. Having said that, we must be ever mindful of the wildly varying and constantly evolving interests of our students, and the significant investment a UT System education represents to many families – an investment they justifiably expect to result in a rewarding career.
I hope you enjoy these final days of summer. Thanks for reading and, as always, for your support.
Bill McRaven
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