Middlesex Community College

Educating Students for Personal & Social Responsibility

Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility

In 2007, The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) announced Middlesex Community College as one of 18 institutions chosen to participate in the Core Commitments Leadership Consortium. MCC joined forces on this national initiative, Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility. The initiative sought to embed personal and social responsibility objectives pervasively across the institution in both the curricular and co-curricular experiences as key educational outcomes for all students.

Since then Middlesex continues to take this role seriously and has worked to ensure MCC is a college community that strives for excellence, respects diversity, contributes to the larger community, behaves in an ethical manner, and takes seriously the viewpoints of others.

Core Commitments Guiding Philosophy

• Student learning is the collective responsibility of all individuals and units responsible for the curriculum and co-curriculum;
• Education for personal and social responsibility, to be intentionally fostered in all students, must pervade the institution's culture;
• Institutions must care about and unapologetically teach for personal and social responsibility;
• Ethical, civic, and moral development must be closely tied to a substantive vision for student learning in the college years that is shared across constituent groups; and
• These forms of learning are cumulative and build on prior knowledge and experience and need to be assessed along the way.

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