Theme 1: Excelling in Integrated Learning and Scholarship

Modern intellectual inquiry has produced a vast explosion of knowledge, facilitated by worldwide sharing of information among scholars and the growth of the Internet. Scholars working in interdisciplinary teams have made major contributions to the growth of knowledge and its applications. Scientific and technological advances and applications of knowledge to the economy and commerce have presented ethical issues we have not previously encountered, including the sustainability of the Earth, the exploration of stem cell research and the use of intellectual property, such as patented pharmaceuticals, to treat the AIDS crisis in Africa. Addressing such issues requires interdisciplinary exploration and interaction among scholars with technical expertise and scholars who bring social, moral and religious perspectives to the conversation.

The University of Dayton is committed to excelling in integrated learning and scholarship. To cope with the explosion of information and knowledge, learning in today's universities involves the ability of faculty and students to discover, integrate, apply and communicate information and knowledge to answer questions or solve problems. Integrated learning involves weaving together information and knowledge from a variety of sources: from texts, conversations, experiences and reflection. The University of Dayton curriculum is designed to enhance integrated learning.

The undergraduate curriculum at the University is designed to enable students in a developmentally appropriate manner to integrate their learning across the boundaries of different disciplines and professional fields, across the boundaries of theory and practice, and across the boundaries of the classroom, the library and residence life. The University is committed to providing an excellent introduction to liberal education as a basis of understanding for integrated knowledge. The University's Common Academic Program strives to integrate learning across the foundations in liberal education and the advanced undergraduate study in the disciplines and professional fields. The undergraduate curriculum should encourage interdisciplinary learning and scholarship, which allows our faculty and students to explore the critical issues shaping our world, such as globalization, climate change and sustainability, the growth of economic inequality and worldwide poverty, and the building of global peace.

The University's graduate programs are designed to allow students to engage in advanced intellectual inquiry as well as to prepare themselves for expanded career opportunities and leadership and service roles. Graduate programs strive to enhance the skills of integrated learning by preparing students to deeply explore a discipline or a professional field and to connect this learning to other fields of inquiry and practice.

We pursue excellence in integrated learning and scholarship by being a community that expects the very best from ourselves and from one another. At the University of Dayton, excellence means thinking, speaking and writing clearly; acting with wise judgment; investing our work with reason, faith and imagination; and dedicating ourselves to a lifelong pursuit of learning.¹ Excellence in integrated learning and scholarship also requires faculty who have competence and depth of specialized knowledge in their academic disciplines as well as the ability to enter into intellectual inquiry that crosses disciplinary boundaries.

Excellent Catholic universities integrate learning and scholarship in search of wisdom. The goal of theoretical wisdom is to discern the truth, i.e., the order of the world by distinguishing first principles of that order and the logical consequences that can be drawn from these principles. The goal of practical wisdom is the exercise of human reason to determine how to act well, i.e., how to order society toward the good. Wisdom also comes from artistic creations that manifest beauty and expand our horizons of human meaning.

The Catholic tradition of learning seeks to educate the whole person. In addition to educating for acquisition of knowledge and skills, the University of Dayton emphasizes the formation of character and the growth of faith. Striving to integrate intellectual, spiritual, religious, moral, emotional, social and physical capacities in the life of the student, the University endeavors to weave all the experiences of campus life into a unified learning environment. We seek to integrate classroom learning with experiences of civic engagement and to use residential community life as an integral part of the unified learning environment.

As part of its Marianist tradition, integrated learning and scholarship at the University must strive to be transformative in two important ways. First, teaching and learning are for the sake of education, for the ongoing development into a more fully human person. While much of higher education and all Catholic higher education strive to develop the fully human person, the Marianist tradition of education emphasizes the integration of head, heart and hands. Education must provide ways to promote connections across and integrity among our ways of thinking — knowing and believing, our ways of feeling — our desires, emotions and passions, and our ways of relating with God and others. Education, in the Marianist tradition, stresses that becoming more fully human requires balance in one's life that can come only by the blending of contemplation and action and the blending of leisure and work.

Second, in the Marianist tradition, integrated learning and scholarship must be connected to leadership and service. It must equip our learners and scholars not only with the skills to analyze and appreciate the critical issues of our society, but also with the skills to imagine futures that will respond to these issues and the skills to organize people and groups that can realize these futures. In the Marianist tradition of education, all those with the privilege of a University education, no matter what their discipline or field, have a responsibility to use their learning for not only their personal good, personal success and the well-being of their family, but also for the well-being of the human family.

¹ c.f. Vision of Excellence 2005