Communities of Engaged Learners Initiative

Utah Valley State College President William A. Sederburg has unveiled a plan to become more engaged in and connected with the local community and mold the institution to develop an educational model that is community-based once it becomes a university. This model, which has been dubbed the Communities of Engaged Learners Initiative, has three principal components made up of three P's: People Place Profession

As part of this new model, Utah Valley University, with regard to its students and employees, will produce:

• People of Integrity (ethics, leadership and character)
• Professional Competence (quality teaching, up-to-date scholarship, faculty mentorship, advising and internships)
• Stewards of Place (serving the region, bolstering economic development, service learning, cultural activities and global awareness)

These three components combine to ultimately produce an atmosphere, not only of learning, but of engaged learning geared at connecting the classroom with the community and providing students with real-world, hands-on training with community partners. This, Sederburg said, is critical to the mission of a regional state university and the future of UVU.

To achieve this end, Sederburg proposed the creation of a new office dedicated to the Communities of Engaged Learning Initiative. This new office will be charged with overseeing grants that support the initiative. Specifically, $400,000 annually has been set aside to fund faculty and staff grants (approximately $2,500) that support and get to the heart of the three P’s. Additional resources will be distributed to build an integrated approach to ethics, career development and stewardship. 

“Our highest priority in all of this is to connect the professional interests of our students with issues facing the community and to connect the campus with the broader community,” Sederburg said. “UVU will be a regional state university, which means that the region’s and community’s interests become our interests.” 

The Communities of Engaged Learners model will be based on the four core strengths of UVSC, which will carry over to UVU:

• quality teaching
• student-centered
•  regionally-focused
• opportunity-based

“Utah Valley University will, fundamentally, be a teaching institution,” Sederburg continued. “We will remain student-centered. We will maintain a commitment to the region and assist local businesses through graduate program offerings. We will also remain true to the opportunity model we’ve embraced in the past in that we will remain committed to our community college role. These concepts will drive us as we move forward as a university.”

President Sederburg also recently announced that 90 new full-time positions will be filled as part of the 2007-08 budget. New positions included in the budget for 2007-08:

• 40 faculty
• 16 academic and support advisors
• 14 instructional/academic support staff
• 20 student/institutional support staff

Total: 90 new positions

“As we fill these positions, we will recruit individuals who are supportive of building communities of engaged learners,” Sederburg concluded. “We must be cognizant that what Utah Valley University will be tomorrow will be largely dependent on who we hire today.”