Faculty Trail Guide

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s mission statement commits the institution to providing an ‘exemplary undergraduate’ education that equips students with a strong liberal arts foundation in a robust intellectual environment that values diversity, collegiality, and creativity. Laudable in any context, this mission statement takes on a much deeper resonance in light of the University’s commitment to access and of the socially, economically, and geographically diverse student body it serves. For many students, and particularly for the third who are the first in their family to attend college, the time they have at UNC Charlotte represents a unique and potentially life-changing opportunity for personal and professional growth.

Designed to proactively foster both the extent and depth of students’ engagement, UNC Charlotte’s Prospect for Success QEP will provide all first-time full-time freshmen with the opportunity to participate in a formal engagement curriculum during their first year of enrollment. Recognizing the diverse needs of students in the University’s seven academic colleges, this engagement curriculum takes different forms in different colleges, but all versions of the curriculum have common elements to make manifest to students both aspirational ‘ways of being’ (the value of engagement) and practical ‘things to do’ (how to be engaged).

Prospect for Success, and the three student learning outcomes, is the outgrowth of conversations held across campus beginning in Fall 2010, when the Office for Academic Affairs solicited proposals from any UNC Charlotte faculty or academic staff member for ways we could improve the undergraduate experience at UNC Charlotte. While Prospect for Success is situated in specific first-year student courses offered in each of our colleges, the values transcend these courses and serve as a guide for how we can all develop independent, engaged and respectful learners among our entire student body. All faculty, academic support staff and student affairs partners are encouraged to think about how your work contributes to the development of intentionality, curiosity and awareness among our students.

For faculty teaching Prospect courses, we’ve created a Moodle project site in Moodle2. Faculty are able to share examples of assignments, learn about the assessment process, and get updates about professional development, research, student peer leadership, and grant opportunities available for those teaching in the Prospect for Success curriculum.