Campus-wide Learning Outcomes

Portland State University strives to provide its students an educational experience based on the core values and unique strengths reflected in the following undergraduate learning outcomes. These campus-wide learning outcomes (CWLO) communicate the University’s priorities to prospective students, help current students understand the guiding principles behind their educational experiences, and provide a framework for campus-wide assessment of student learning. Through engaging with these outcomes in their broad-based general education experiences, in-depth intellectual explorations within their majors, and the opportunities they encounter outside the classroom through Student Affairs and extra-curricular activities, students will graduate from PSU prepared to contribute responsibly to society in the 21st century. 

Disciplinary and/or Professional Expertise

Students will gain mastery at a baccalaureate level in a defined body of knowledge through attainment of their program’s objectives and completion of their major.

Creative and Critical Thinking

Students will develop the disposition and skills to strategize, gather, organize, create, refine, analyze, and evaluate the credibility of relevant information and ideas.

Communication

Students will communicate effectively in a range of social, academic, and professional contexts using a variety of means, including written, oral, numeric/quantitative, graphic, and visual modes of communication using appropriate technologies.

Diversity

Student will recognize and understand the rich and complex ways that group and individual inequalities and interactions impact self and society.

Ethics and Social Responsibility

Students will develop ethical and social responsibility to others, will understand issues from a variety of cultural perspectives, will collaborate with others to address ethical and social issues in a sustainable manner, and will increase self-awareness.

Internationalization

Students will understand the richness and challenge of world cultures and the effects of globalization, and will develop the skills and attitudes to function as “global citizens.”

Engagement

Students will engage in learning that is based on reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationships, and through this engagement will apply theory and skills in diverse venues, linking the conceptual to the practical.

Sustainability

Students will identify, act on, and evaluate their professional and personal actions with the knowledge and appreciation of interconnections among economic, environmental, and social perspectives in order to create a more sustainable future.

 Campus-wide Learning Outcomes with Rationales

 Campus-wide Learning Outcomes with Criteria

PSU Undergraduate Programs Campus-wide Learning Outcomes Coverage