Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, there is a new oversight committee in the spirit of shared governance. Per the approved University Senate proposal, "The Essential Education Program will be overseen by the Office of the Provost, who will assemble a team of representative stakeholders to provide guidance for the interpretation and continuous improvement of the curriculum… This team will work with the associate provost [of undergraduate education] to evaluate all proposed revisions to the Essential Education curriculum for consistency with the philosophy and goals of Essential Education." The new committee is called the Essential Education Steering Committee, and it is now operating to fulfill the above mentioned responsibilities.

Yes, both the College of Business (COB) and the College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (CFRES) are being included in the SHAPE* units. COB and CFRES have historically participated in the HASS course lists, so their inclusion as part of Essential Education is not new—the use of the term SHAPE just better calls out their inclusion.

* SHAPE: Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy/Environment

No. All new incoming students starting in and after fall 2025 are part of audit years that have Essential Education built in. Students who start before fall 2025 could have the option to change their audit year but are not required to do so.

You can learn more about the administrative processes for Essential Education on Michigan Tech’s Academic Affairs website.

In addition to providing a variety of resources and updates throughout the 2024-25 academic year, the Essential Education Steering Committee will be providing one or more additional training workshops for advisors on how to work with the Essential Education requirements.

Yes. Just like our current disciplinary minors, each Essential Education minor will have an advisor designated by the sponsoring unit. These advisors may advise for multiple minors, or for both majors and minors.

Yes, if a course transfers in as equivalent to a course included on a list and/or in a minor. Note, however, that there is a residency requirement for all Michigan Tech minors that requires students to "complete at least 6 credit hours of 3000-level or higher minor-required courses at Michigan Tech," which would prohibit students from completing an Essential Education minor using all transfer courses. These students would want to choose the distribution pathway.

All transfer students who have completed the MTA will be exempt from Essential Education requirements; official MTA completion will be accepted as completing all Essential Education requirements. Where there is a difference in total credits (MTA being fewer than Essential Education), MTA-fulfilled students will in some cases make up the additional credits as free electives. There is no upper-division Essential Education credit requirement for students who have completed the MTA. MTA-fulfilled students will not need to complete the Activities course requirement (but they will need to make up the credits as free electives).

We will follow current practice: "Students who do not complete the entire block of courses required for the MTA will receive credit for the courses they do complete on the basis of individual course evaluation and established transfer equivalencies." The structure of Essential Education should allow for most normal courses to fulfill requirements.

There is no explicit requirement for taking courses from different disciplines in Essential Education (for any category). A student could take all physics courses to satisfy the STEM and Natural/Physical Science requirements if they wanted. Also note that Essential Ed also does not explicitly require a course with a lab.

Per the approved University Senate proposal, Proposal 18.23, "The Michigan Tech Seminar and up to 5 Essential Education components may be satisfied by major requirements and would be marked as ‘met by degree requirements' (or similar language) on degree audits."

Both STEM and SHAPE courses may be satisfied by major requirements under Essential Education. Under the General Education program, only STEM requirements could be satisfied in the major.

Please note, also per the approved senate proposal, "Programs may not dictate students' Essential Education minor or elective choices, beyond the fact that some major courses may also satisfy Essential Education or Minor requirements."

Majors that wish to change their degree requirements to include specific courses or choice points to satisfy an Essential Education requirement must seek approval from the course's offering unit. This is consistent with the standard practice for proposals for new programs that expect the proposing unit to demonstrate approval for the inclusion of any courses from outside their own unit.

While many units have chosen to adapt an existing course or develop a new course to fulfill the seminar requirement, others have chosen to require the University-wide Michigan Tech Seminar for their students. Either choice is an option. ENG 1101 Engineering Analysis and Problem Solving will serve as the Michigan Tech Seminar for first-year engineering students.

Yes.

The Seminar Working Group will provide a set of required assignments/modules for all seminar courses. The required assignments are expected to take no more than one-third of a 1-credit course, with the expectation of about 15 hours total of in- and out-of-class work. The focus of the shared seminar modules is on three areas: making connections on campus, building habits for success (including an introduction to reflection, folio thinking, and our ePortfolio platform), and developing an academic plan (with a focus on understanding the value of the Essential Abilities and making the most of the opportunities offered by the Essential Education program).

To best support students, student work expectations for required modules (like grading and word count) will remain consistent across seminars. However, the required modules will come with suggestions and options for adapting the assignments to the needs of particular majors. A plan is in place for continuous improvement of the modules using assessment data and instructor feedback year-to-year.

Active Michigan Tech students who update their catalog year to take advantage of Essential Education may have the Michigan Tech Seminar requirement waived. Students who return to Michigan Tech after their catalog year has expired and follow the Essential Education requirements should be encouraged to enroll in the transfer-specific seminar, but they may request to have the seminar requirement waived.

No, they do not. Their academic advisor may advise them to take another seminar depending on the other non-Essential Education content offered in the course.

Where there is a major-specific seminar course required by a student’s major, transfer students will take this course. Where a unit does not require a specific seminar, or with approval from their unit, transfer students will take a seminar course designed specifically for transfer students, addressing their unique needs. In both cases, units may make decisions about recommending the transfer seminar versus their major-specific seminar at their discretion.

Students who have fulfilled the Michigan Transfer Agreement when they start at Michigan Tech are not required to take a seminar course for Essential Education, but they may be required to take a major-specific seminar for major requirements. They also have the option to take the transfer seminar to build a cohort with fellow transfer students.

Essential Education Experience courses must be reviewed by the Essential Education program and meet the following criteria:

• Engagement outside of the classroom through immersive project-based or experiential learning.
• At least 50 percent of course time should be spent engaging in the project-based experience or experiential learning component.
• Critical reflection assignments connected to experience, at least once every other week or equivalent in frequency. Examples of critical reflection include writing or other expressions that develop self-awareness, promote continuous learning through ongoing experience, or draw links between theory and practice.
• Best practices and ethical standards for engagement with communities or other stakeholders are taught. These will be appropriate to the particular discipline and experience, drawing on the faculty member’s expertise.
• Interdisciplinary/integrative approaches to learning based in SHAPE disciplines.
• Student work is showcased in the ePortfolio for Essential Education.
• Students should have at least second-year status by the time the course is taken. Courses at levels 2000-4000 will be accepted with this prerequisite. (Special cases are allowed for students who study abroad early in their academic career.)
• At least one Contribute/Transform Essential Ability (Engage in Civic Life, Innovate Solutions, or Create) should be a learning objective for the course.

Active Michigan Tech students who update their catalog year to take advantage of Essential Education are required to complete an Essential Education Experience. Students who return to Michigan Tech after their catalog year has expired and follow the Essential Education requirements may request an exception if they have otherwise completed Essential Education course requirements and have an upper-division SHAPE course that can be substituted.

This course list is an area of growth and innovation for the Essential Education program. SHAPE units have been actively involved in discussions about how to shift resources to provide E3 courses, and new courses are under development. In summer 2024, nine course development grants were awarded for faculty to develop new courses. The Essential Education program expects to repeat this grant process in future semesters and in summer 2025.

Cassandra Reed-VanDam, Essential Education's experience manager, will provide leadership for course development, actively seek out and connect with community partners, and develop faculty resources and professional development. You can contact Cassandra with questions at cmvandam@mtu.edu.

Per the Essential Education vision document, “We invite departments across campus to collaborate with the SHAPE units on the creation of Essential Education Minors that may be particularly relevant or interesting to their students and may include a major requirement or technical elective as part of the minor.” It is expected that Essential Education minor concept proposals will be reviewed by Essential Education leadership before any work is done on a formal proposal to ensure both fit with Essential Education and that true collaboration/partnership with SHAPE units is in place, if needed.

The goal is to have approximately 15 Essential Education minors total. This number should allow for a wide variety of topics to reflect different student interests without presenting an overwhelming number of options. We are also mindful of the burdens of maintaining and providing advising for many different minors. The Essential Education Steering Committee oversees the ongoing management of the Essential Education minors, including discussions about revising minor requirements, shelving established minors, and/or proposing new Essential Education minors.

Yes. This is already common practice in existing minors. Units proposing minors are urged to be careful about capacity issues if course lists are short or unevenly distributed across semesters.

No. The Essential Ed minor pathway is just one of two pathway options. Note: Students enrolled before fall 2025 operate under the General Education model active in the calendar year they started, but have the option to change their calendar year and "opt in" to Essential Education.

No. The Essential Ed minor pathway is just one of two pathway options. Depending on how many transfer credits they have, the distribution pathway might make the most sense for them. All incoming students who have completed the Michigan Transfer Agreement (MTA) will be exempt from Essential Education requirements. They may pursue an Essential Education minor if they choose,  but it will require them to take additional coursework (for example, to meet our policy for all minors, they will need to have 6 credits of upper-division courses taken at Michigan Tech).

The minor and distribution pathways have most of the course list requirements in common, so those courses would automatically map between the pathways. If the minor requires an Essential Education Experience, that would also automatically map over. If not, the unspecified minor courses from the SHAPE lists could align with the Arts and Culture, SHAPE, and/or STEM list. If a student takes the minor-specific course that is not restricted to the SHAPE lists before switching and it doesn't count in that student's major, that would have to count as a free elective if the student has those credits available.

The process is similar to how students change minors currently. The requirements will vary by minor; please refer to the minor-specific requirements for advising information.

Minors without an E3 course list will use a 3000-level, 1-credit folio-thinking course to support students in completing the ePortfolio requirement. This could be a UN course or one that uses the host unit's prefix, if they prefer. This course would satisfy 1 credit of the Activities for Well-being and Success requirement, so it will not add to the overall credit total for Essential Education.

You may have heard earlier discussion of using a 0-credit “course,” but that idea has been replaced with the above, which more accurately reflects the student effort expected and allows for more direct support and feedback for students as they complete their minor ePortfolio.

An overview of Essential Education, including the different minors, will be included as part of the Michigan Tech Seminar course. The Essential Education Minors page will feature information about the minors as they are developed. Information about Essential Education Minors are also included in various recruitment materials.

Example: A student begins in a (hypothetical) Global Languages and Cultures Essential Education minor but decides they would like to take the extra classes to earn a Spanish or German language minor. They can’t double count credits for two minors per the University Senate policy on minors (406.1).

Most courses in the Essential Education minors would also satisfy the distribution pathway, so students in this situation would most likely switch to the distribution pathway and then earn the disciplinary minor credential on top. If students had already taken a minor-specific course that was not part of the distribution pathway lists, those would either count toward the new minor or free electives, and the remaining credits would need to be satisfied in the Essential Education program. 

As credits may not overlap between two minors, students will need to designate only one course for a credential if there are overlapping courses. A mechanism is in development for students to choose which credential they want to earn. They can complete the requirements for the Essential Education minor as their General Education credits, but choose not to earn that minor as their credential. A mechanism in the degree audit system will track that the Essential Education requirements are met, even if the minor is not awarded.

No existing minor will be forced to become an Essential Education Minor. It is at the discretion of the offering department to determine whether they would like to adapt existing minors, propose new minors for Essential Education, or participate at all.

Yes, disciplinary minors will remain active and the existing policies will still apply. Because current policy prohibits students from using the same course(s) to fulfill requirements in more than one minor, students will want to work with their advisors to understand how courses may overlap. However, for example, a student could earn a STEM minor with the same STEM courses used for Essential Education.

The Activities list is divided into four categories:

• Physical Well-being: Activities that focus on improving physical health, whether individual or on a team.
• Creative Expression: Activities that focus on making, creating, or expressing as an act of creativity.
• Mental/Emotional Well-being: Activities that directly address and focus on mental, emotional, spiritual, social, and behavioral well-being.
• Success: Activities that focus on leadership, as well as student and career success.

No. These categories are proposed to help students identify what might be best for them, describe the vision for this new requirement, and help streamline the process of appointing staff to academic units.

Yes, co-curricular courses can count as Activities.

There is no specific restriction on which academic units can offer Activities courses. Courses taught by staff in non-academic units (for example, Career Services or the Wahtera Center) will be housed in academic units.

As a starting point, Essential Education has suggested the following:

• Physical: Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology
• Creative Expression: Visual and Performing Arts
• Mental/Emotional Well-being: Psychology and Human Factors, KIP
  Success: Pavlis Honors College

Activities courses are 1 or 0.5 credit hours, to allow students to explore multiple Activities as they fulfill the 3-credit requirement.

Like all Essential Education courses, new Activities courses will go through a proposal process that includes approval from the Essential Education Steering Committee and the regular white binder course proposal process.

At Michigan Tech, folio-thinking activities and the ePortfolio platform:

• Give students an opportunity to reflect on, understand, and describe for others what they are learning in and out of the classroom.
• Invite students to tell the story of their own learning, recognizing that the connections that students make themselves are the most meaningful and impactful.
• Provide a professional repository for students to collect, manage, and share work that best reflects their educational journey.

“Folio thinking” is a term used to describe what students are doing when they select artifacts, reflect on their learning, make connections between experiences, and present it all in a form meant to be shared with others (whether an instructor, employer, or other audience). We use “folio thinking” to signal that ePortfolio work is much more than just assembling a digital portfolio, and is in fact a pedagogical strategy.

Additional resources about reflection and ePortfolios:

• This short Reflective Writing video on YouTube provides an excellent introduction to reflection.
• The University of Cambridge has a comprehensive library guide that walks through many aspects of reflective practices.
• The American Association of Colleges and Universities Field Guide to ePortfolio offers many examples of reflective practice as it is used in various types of ePortfolio pedagogies.
• This article on “How the Power of Interest Drives Learning” from KQED News includes examples of the kinds of questions that prompt reflection about connections between a student’s academic work and their personal interests and goals.

In the Michigan Tech Seminar: Seminar modules include assignments that introduce students to reflection and have them submit work using the ePortfolio platform. Students will receive some type of formative feedback to support their skill development in reflection. The primary folio-thinking assignment we have planned for the seminar is a self-assessment and reflection activity that introduces the Essential Abilities.

In Essential Education course list courses (SHAPE, STEM, etc.): Students will complete a short folio-thinking assignment that includes an asset (assignment, such as a paper, project, discussion post, problem set, quiz, etc.) from that course and a short reflection, connecting student work to one or more of the Essential Abilities. Templates for these folio-thinking assignments (which can be used as-is or adapted) will be provided to faculty, along with training in the ePortfolio platform. Embedding folio thinking throughout Essential Education ensures that students continue to save and reflect on assets throughout their academic journey.

In the Essential Education Experience (E3)*: Students will complete a cumulative, integrative self-assessment and reflection assignment in the ePortfolio platform that asks them to connect their learning to the Essential Abilities.

* For students in Essential Education minors where an E3 course is not required, a similar cumulative, integrative self-assessment and reflection assignment linked to the minor theme will be assigned using the 1-credit folio-thinking minor course described above. This course will count toward the Activities requirement.

There is no expectation that instructors will "grade" all folio-thinking reflections submitted to the ePortfolio platform (with the exception of the Michigan Tech Seminar, where students will get formative feedback on reflective writing; and the Michigan Tech Experience, where an integrative folio-thinking assignment is required).

A folio-thinking assignment submitted to the ePortfolio platform should be something the instructor would assign and grade anyway—and in many cases, the reflection portion can be pass/fail or did it/didn’t do it.

Faculty will be provided with a wide range of suggested reflection prompts to give them options that are well-aligned with their existing course learning goals and the Essential Abilities.

The ePortfolio platform we have adopted is integrated with Canvas to make it easier for faculty to see that students have completed this requirement.

Instructors who participated in a prior IDEAhub pilot program on reflection in the classroom found that student reflections, as a high-impact practice, supported student learning and provided information about students’ progress toward learning objectives that went beyond the information available through traditional tests and assignments.

No. While folio thinking is built into courses throughout the Essential Education program, there would be no penalty for students who are “missing” materials due to transfer credits. Students with transfer credit will be able (and encouraged) to add additional artifacts from their college coursework at previous institution(s) to the ePortfolio platform, where it would help them create a stronger overall portfolio for various uses.

The completion of an ePortfolio is not a separate requirement for graduation. The folio-thinking assignments are built into courses in the program, so a student will be expected to complete folio-thinking steps as part of their course requirements (losing points toward their final grade in the course if they do not).

An integrative folio-thinking assignment will be a required element of the Essential Education Experience courses. A separate 1-credit folio-thinking course will be built into any Essential Education Minors that do not include an Essential Education Experience.

Our ePortfolio platform will be available for any instructor on campus to use as part of course assignments and/or degree program requirements. The platform also allows students to create their own portfolios independently or as part of an extracurricular program.

During the initial implementation phase, the ePortfolio platform will be used in a limited number of classes to ensure that adequate support is available for students and instructors. However, the Essential Education Steering Committee will also oversee the development of a number of workshops and other opportunities for the campus community to learn more about the possibilities of this new learning platform. Visit the Essential Ed NewsBlog or contact Nancy Barr at nbbarr@mtu.edu for the next assigned date and location.

Students with an MTA-fulfilled transcript are not required to complete any additional courses to satisfy the Essential Education requirement—they are considered to have fully completed the Essential Education requirements. Any differential in credits earned between the MTA and Essential Education (where MTA has fewer credits than Essential Education) can be made up with free elective credits.

The General Education program requires MTA-fulfilled students to also complete the upper-level HASS and co-curricular requirements, and potentially take additional credits to reach the 15-credit STEM requirement.

In Essential Education, both STEM and SHAPE courses can be satisfied by major requirements. In the General Education program, only STEM requirements can be satisfied in the major.

Essential Education will not have restricted course lists, such as the restricted STEM list or restricted HASS list in the General Education program.

All courses included in Essential Education will participate in the assessment of an Essential Ability (our program outcomes) and, in most cases, will require students to add an “asset” (assignment and reflection) to the ePortfolio platform. In addition, the course lists for Essential Education are not limited to specific units. Because of the greater inclusion, there will not be any “restricted” lists in Essential Education. Due to the expectation of assessment and participation with the ePortfolio, specific courses must opt in and there will be no blanket statement such as, “all 2000+ courses in these prefixes count.”

Also note that Essential Ed requirements do not explicitly require a course with a lab.

Activities courses in Essential Education may be used for free electives. Co-curricular courses in the General Education program cannot be used this way.

If a course that is required for a specific program has more credits than what is required for Essential Education or General Education, that course will satisfy both requirements.

For example: In the General Education program, a 5- or 6-credit Math course satisfies the 4-credit requirement. In Essential Education, a 4- or 5-credit Math course satisfies the 3-credit requirement.

Setting the minimum to 3 credits in Essential Education opens the door to other math/quantitative courses that are currently on the General Education STEM mathematics course list (e.g., BUS 2300 or SS 4010), and for perhaps others to be added (e.g., MA 2710 for Statistics, for which students can earn AP credit) to fulfill the requirements. This is helpful for students who are in programs without a specific math requirement.