A Statement of Values for Undergraduate Education at WPI

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  1. WPI’s programs shall emphasize fundamental concepts, knowledge, and skill, and ensure that students are able to apply them within the context of their major disciplines.
  2. WPI’s programs shall emphasize the development of students as effective thinkers and communicators, able to use evidence to present their ideas with logic, clarity, and persuasion.
  3. Programmatic breadth in general, and balance between technical and humanistic components in particular, are the hallmarks of a WPI undergraduate education. In addition to educating students in their major discipline, WPI’s programs shall provide students with a broad preparation for fulfilling lives as responsible professionals and informed citizens.
  4. Grounded in project and course experiences, a WPI education shall provide a firm foundation for life-long learning in a variety of fields. WPI programs shall emphasize inquiry-based learning and open-ended problem solving. Students shall bear a considerable responsibility for learning outside of the classroom.
  5. WPI’s programs shall be sufficiently flexible so as to allow students significant choice in and responsibility for planning their courses of study. Faculty, via the central teaching tasks of project and academic advising, shall ensure that student learning experiences encourage critical reflection, decision making, and personal growth.
  6. WPI’s programs shall emphasize the scientific, technical, societal, and humanistic contexts in which knowledge is applied and constructed. Education activities shall challenge students to make connections between disciplines, to consider multiple viewpoints, and to appreciate the consequences of their actions. The curriculum shall prominently feature integrative and interdisciplinary activities.
  7. WPI’s learning environment and educational activities shall balance personal responsibility and individual accountability with cooperation, collaboration and mutual respect. Members of the community shall be encouraged to value academic integrity, and to become conscious of the value that such integrity confers to themselves and to the community.
  8. WPI shall be committed to assessment and improvement of student learning.