Graduate Profile

Career and Life Skills

Developing career and life skills means that we are committed to providing all learners with opportunities to practice, get feedback, and be assessed on the following:

  • Manage time and resources effectively to complete projects and tasks 
    • Identify and pursue projects that are relevant and meaningful in the short-term and long-term
    • Identify major tasks and timelines, utilize resources, and implement strategies to see a project through to completion
    • Identify and anticipate changing expectations or conditions, generate multiple solutions, and make appropriate adjustments to project plans and timelines
  • Communicate effectively to authentic audiences
    • Apply public speaking skills to convey knowledge and information coherently and confidently during a presentation
    • Create professional work products by using a variety of formats, applying conventions skillfully, and leveraging digital tools when appropriate
  • Use resources to articulate and access the support needed to achieve goals
    • Know when and how to seek help when I need it
    • Build and leverage networks of support

Sense of Purpose, Sense of Self

Developing the competency of sense of purpose and self means that we are committed to providing all learners with opportunities to practice, get feedback, and be assessed on the following skills:

  • Use self-reflection as a means to develop my humanity and self-awareness 
    • Identify racial, cultural, and personal identities and lived experiences, and leverage as strengths and subject of study 
    • Analyze my learning journey to identify strengths and areas of expertise
  • Apply a growth mindset
    • Demonstrate how to increase knowledge and skills through effort, practice, feedback, etc.
    • Recognize challenging learning situations, generate multiple approaches, and implement strategies until the goal/task is accomplished
  • Design my future
    • Identify academic and personal goals, identify and apply a range of strategies to meet goals, and monitor progress towards accomplishing goals
    • Analyze setbacks, celebrate successes, and adapt approach as needed to successfully reach academic and personal goals
    • Use technology and digital tools as a way to make meaning of my experience, set and achieve goals, and demonstrate skills, knowledge, competency/mastery, and talents.

Creativity

Developing the competency of creativity means that we are committed to providing all learners with opportunities to practice, get feedback, and be assessed on the following skills:

  • Create works of art, products, or solutions to explore a meaningful concept, topic, or issue 
    • Express a point of view, concept, or idea that is personally meaningful and makes a connection to the real-world, or propose novel solutions to (solve) a real-world problem or meet a need
    • Situate work, innovations, solutions, processes, etc. within historical and cultural contexts
    • Use the tools and techniques, and apply the skills, processes, elements, structures, conventions, etc. of an artistic genre or design methodology 
    • Explore different media, genres, tools, etc. without an end goal, or expectation of success
  • Engage in a creative or problem-solving process
    • Make choices about mediums, tools, genres, and materials when expressing a point of view, concept, idea, or solving a problem innovatively
    • Identify and assess the knowns and constraints of a situation, problem, context, etc. and take appropriate risks to move beyond constraints.  
    • Employ a process that includes researching an idea, concept, topic, viewpoint, sharing ideas clearly, listening to others’ ideas, seeking and incorporating feedback; be receptive to feedback and open to different viewpoints
    • Implement a plan to bring a concept to fruition, practice/prototype, share work publicly, assess the outcomes, and make changes to the work, product, or solution; work through setbacks in the creative/design process through productive struggle and multiple iterations

Leadership, Empathy, and Collaboration

Developing the competency of leadership, empathy, and collaboration means that we are committed to providing all learners with opportunities to practice, get feedback, and be assessed on the following:

  • Demonstrate leadership with and for equity
    • Coordinate a team to develop and achieve a common goal
    • Assess strengths (my own and others) and evaluate how best to use them in order to accomplish common goal
    • Seek input and contributions from all team members
    • Demonstrate allyship and solidarity in my actions and words
  • Empathize with others
    • Listen to and synthesize different ideas & perspectives to make team decisions, negotiate conflicts, and accomplish goals
    • Analyze/critique multiple and varying perspectives
  • Apply cooperative processes for effective collaboration
    • Apply cooperative processes to make decisions about resources, negotiate conflicts, and achieve a quality common goal/outcome
    • Assess/critique personal strengths and areas of growth in order to evaluate the impact on team outcomes
    • Provide constructive feedback to others to improve outcomes, products and/or services
    • Utilize digital tools and resources that facilitate collaborative processes

Global, Local, and Digital Identity

Developing the competency of a global, local, and digital identity means that we are committed to providing all learners with opportunities to practice, get feedback, and be assessed on the following:

  • Take action related to issues impacting me, my community, and my planet
    • Analyze root causes of local, global and digital issues, especially from the perspective of those most impacted
    • Plan and implement collective or individual action to address a local, digital, or global issues, and assess the impact these actions (my own and others) 
  • Interact with cultural competence and anti-racism
    • Leverage technology and democratic processes to gather, listen to, and make sense of diverse perspectives in order to better understand local, digital, and global issues
    • Recognize that the global, local, and digital identities of our communities matter
    • Be inclusive and respectful in my communication
  • Practice multilingualism
    • Develop high levels of proficiency in more than one language
    • Exercise flexibility in language choices (e.g., code switching)
  • Use technology and digital tools to make meaning of my experience, demonstrate knowledge, skills, & talents, and positively impact my communities
    • Navigate digital and virtual spaces adeptly and responsibly
    • Leverage online spaces for agency and action
    • Contribute to and create for, not just consume from, digital spaces

Content Knowledge

Developing the skills that build content knowledge means that we are committed to providing all learners with opportunities to practice, get feedback, and be assessed on the following:

  • Apply disciplinary knowledge, practices, and language in authentic contexts
    • Use disciplinary knowledge, practices, and language to understand myself, my community, and the world
    • Use disciplinary knowledge, practices, and language to analyze and/or develop solutions for real-world problems
    • Make connections within and across disciplines, to external contexts, and to themselves
  • Engage in inquiry (research)
    • Generate researchable questions that are personally meaningful and have real-world connections
    • Design and carry out an investigation
    • Analyze information/data and draw defensible, evidence-based conclusions[1] 
  • Think critically
    • Use reasoned judgment to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information from a variety of sources
    • Evaluate the validity, credibility, and logic of arguments and evidence
  • Analyze complex texts across the disciplines (literacy)
    • Read for in-depth understanding and meaning
    • Analyze the impact of author’s choices
  • Compose evidence-based arguments
    • Make claims and anticipate counterclaims (others’ perspectives)
    • Support ideas with credible and relevant evidence
    • Organize ideas and use precise language

This page was last updated on June 19, 2022