Center for Resources in General Education (CIVIS): Towards student success in General and STEM education

Researchers at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez (UPRM) have conducted an analysis of student needs and have identified strategies to respond to the General and STEM education challenges at UPRM. A Center for Resources in General Education (CIVIS) has been established to deal with these challenges by providing students and professors a new, integrated perspective (focused on General and STEM skills) of the curriculum, and by enabling student academic success through various learning opportunities. CIVIS brings together faculty from Agricultural Sciences, Arts and Sciences, Business Administration and Engineering in order to develop activities that provide interdisciplinary and global perspectives to UPRM´s General Education. The Center focuses on two main activities: (1) Paths to Student Success, and (2) Sustainable Context with the use of student learning modules tying the activities together. All initiatives of the Center are supported by a recent grant from the U.S. Department of Education, and are based on the success of initiatives that have been previously tested at a smaller scale at UPRM. CIVIS provides resources to expand the reach of those initiatives and will ensure sustainability by the institutionalization of those initiatives.