AAC&U Program Offices

The Office of Quality, Curriculum and Assessment (QCA) will

• Continue commitment to advancing the LEAP vision for a twenty-first-century liberal education, while testing (through the Quality Collaboratives initiative) the utility of a competency framework for college learning—the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP).  QCA also will work to advance a “sea change” in assessment practices that moves students’ authentic work (projects, research, performances, etc.) to the center of assessment focus, using the VALUE rubrics and e-portfolios as catalysts for change.

The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success (DESS) will

• Advance AAC&U's work toward high-quality learning and 21st-century outcomes for all students, emphasizing the success of students historically underrepresented in higher education
• Accelerate broad-scale systemic innovation to engage diversity and challenge inequities as definitive ways to make excellence inclusive, developing and supporting institutional change strategies at broad access institutions.

The Office of Integrative Liberal Learning and the Global Commons (ILGC) will

• Devote new energy and leadership—in concert with Bringing Theory to Practice—to the catalytic role of the liberal arts and sciences in a high quality and public-spirited twenty-first-century education.
• Work on students’ engagement with “big questions” and rigorous inquiry across the liberal arts disciplines and in a cornerstone to capstone remapping of general education.
• Work actively to reposition the liberal arts and sciences—through general education and major programs—as windows into the ‘big questions’ we need to answer together, both as citizens of a diverse democracy, and as responsible partners in an interconnected world.

To see personnel working in each office, see the AAC&U Staff Directory.