Philosophy

AASCU recommends using four "buckets" to organize RFY: Curriculum, Students, Faculty, and Institutional Intentionality. While those buckets lead to interesting ideas, they didn't establish a useful organizational structure to develop and implement those ideas. In the end, the RFY Team created sub-groups to pursue those ideas more fully. Those groups are:

• Belonging & Mindset
• Bridge
• Co-Curricular Connections
• Career Advising
• Course Design Academy
• Curricular Coherence (Badges)
• Efficient Sharing of Information with Students (SOU FAQ)
• First-Year Advising
• Predictive Analytics
• Simplified Educational Pathways (Major Maps)

Though the sub-groups are separate, the initiatives they developed all undergird a larger theme, what the RFY Team refers to as "student understanding of educational purpose." In broad strokes, this means that students understand why they are here at SOU; that students understand that what they're learning inside and outside the classroom has coherence, meaning, and value.

• Coherence – What's learned in one place is connected to what's learned elsewhere, whether in the classroom or outside
• Meaning – The development of skills like critical thinking, information literacy, written communication, and quantitative reasoning are foundational to higher education and lifelong learning.
• Value – What students learn at SOU will prepare them for a rewarding career. In the words of SOU's Strategic Plan: "SOU will develop curriculum and provide learning experiences that prepare all learners for life and work in an evolving future"