Theme 1 Learn

Innovative Teaching and Learning in an Era of Opportunity

Building upon decades of curricular innovation and national leadership in experiential learning, we will:

Theme Progress:
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Engaged Learning and Mentoring

BOLDLY ELON will magnify the transformative power of student- and learning-centered relationships. With Elon’s characteristic drive for continual improvement, we will deepen engaged learning, providing every student with access to high-impact experiences. Through a groundbreaking mentoring model, students will learn to build developmental networks that include peers, staff and faculty, as well as others beyond the university.

This lifelong constellation of mentors will emerge as a hallmark of an Elon education, engaging all students in developing essential skills and fluencies – writing, speaking, creative problem solving, collaboration, intercultural learning, data competency, media literacy, ethics and personal and professional agility.

Objectives and Progress

Last updated: March 2025

  • Create a four-year mentoring model, teaching every student to build a network of mentors, including peers, faculty, staff and others beyond the university.
  • Provide financial resources to ensure all students have access to internships.
  • Achieve 100 percent participation in course-embedded undergraduate research and engage one-third of undergraduates in one-on-one, deeply mentored undergraduate research.
  • Deepen our #1-ranked study abroad program, making it accessible to all students and increasing students’ acquisition of second languages.
  • Prepare every student to participate in community and civic engagement, gaining essential skills and an understanding of their civic responsibilities.
  • Promote leadership development through peer mentoring, student employment and student organizations.
  • Provide all students the opportunity to work closely with faculty or staff members to design and complete deep and culminating signature projects.
  • Endow the Center for Engaged Learning as it becomes the leading international center for research on engaged learning.

Key:

  • Developing
  • Progressing
  • Complete

STEM, Engineering, Nursing and Data Competency

In response to the global demand for more engineers and STEM-related skills, BOLDLY ELON will advance a distinctive and cross-disciplinary STEM program. Graduates of these programs, grounded in the liberal arts and experiential learning, will be sought after as problem-solvers focused on the common good.

Objectives and Progress

Last updated: March 2025

  • Develop a nationally known school of engineering distinguished by engaged learning and a strong foundation in the arts and sciences.
  • Launch nursing programs and related healthcare certificates with leadership from the School of Health Sciences and a program at the intersection of health communications and health administration led by the communications and business schools.
  • Develop curricula, short courses and certificate programs across the curriculum in all colleges and schools to ensure all students are prepared to access, analyze and manipulate complex data.
  • Build engineering and physics facilities to anchor a new STEM and innovation quad and promote collaboration and discovery across disciplines, design thinking and entrepreneurship.
  • Renovate McMichael Science Center and open a university-wide STEM Center to support students across all majors and expand industry connections.

Key:

  • Developing
  • Progressing
  • Complete

Innovative Teaching and Learning Across the Curriculum and for a Lifetime

Elon’s rich intellectual community has been propelled by the strategic choice to place excellence in arts and sciences — central to the development of freedom of thought and liberty of conscience – at the core of the undergraduate curriculum and fully integrate it with outstanding professional schools and graduate education. Boldly Elon will deepen the arts and sciences, Core Curriculum and work across disciplines, ensuring that graduates are creative, culturally agile, ethically grounded and well-prepared to address questions of societal importance.

Objectives and Progress

Last updated: March 2025

  • Deepen students’ engagement in the arts and sciences through cross-disciplinary programs, engagement with challenges facing our world, individual degree pathways and flexible study options.
  • Advance the College of Arts and Sciences, Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education and the Schools of Education, Law, Communications and Health Sciences, and grow graduate and professional education for alumni, adult and professional learners – in analytics, health sciences, education, arts, entrepreneurship and developing fields.
  • Develop 3+1 or 3+2 programs to provide interconnected undergraduate and graduate degrees.
  • Further develop Elon’s leadership in public policy research, expanding the scope of the Elon Poll as a national survey and reconceiving the Imagining the Internet Center as an interdisciplinary effort focused on the impact and evolution of digital life.
  • Achieve national recognition for the School of Law, a leading innovator in legal education, for its highly experiential and distinctive approach to preparing students for the legal profession.
  • Achieve top-40 rankings for the Love School of Business graduate and undergraduate programs.
  • Construct spaces for Elon’s nationally recognized theatre, music, dance, design and music theatre programs.

Key:

  • Developing
  • Progressing
  • Complete