Student Learning Outcomes

We believe in a key set of characteristics and capacities that enable students to achieve personal growth and make a positive contribution to our world. The outcomes we aim to foster in students that travel with us are:

  1. Openness to New Ideas and Experiences: Eagerness and curiosity to learn from the perspectives of others and the ability to incorporate one’s own experiences into a lifelong quest for knowledge and growth.
  2. Sense of Wonderment: The ability to be amazed and inspired by the world, from the small and seemingly mundane to the powerful and seemingly impossible to understand; recognizing beauty in the unknown, while letting the world’s mysteries stir thoughtful questions and give rise to new meanings and understandings; a sense of awe as a driver of one’s passion and achievement.
  3. A Belief that All People are Connected by a Shared Humanity: Recognizing the innate value of any human being; embracing diversity, and believing that what unites us is stronger than what divides us; understanding the interconnectedness of one’s actions and the notion that individual actions can have global impact; the ability to connect local stories, struggles, and successes to larger structural and systemic issues facing the world.
  4. A Desire to Positively Impact the Lives of Others: A drive to use one’s talents as a force for good in local and global communities; recognizing the power of a series of small actions towards a larger goal and contributing personal effort towards creating change.
  5. Empathy: The ability to not just “feel someone else’s pain,” but rather to walk in their shoes and see the world through their eyes; a more profound ability to switch perspectives and recognize dual viewpoints. Empathy, rather than sympathy or pity, is a precursor to effecting change.
  6. Self-Awareness: The ability to define values, motivations, and passions, and to identify how those values are shaped; the ability to assess one’s own strengths and weaknesses, analyze where and how to improve, and to reflect on and re-evaluate previous opinions or decisions; the desire to use an understanding of self to better relate to and communicate with others.
  7. Humility: An ability to understand one’s place and importance, to deeply respect others, to recognize others’ talents without comparison to one’s own; to possess a grounded understanding of one’s limitations; to provide service to others without question of their position in society.
  8. Grit: Intrinsic determination to persevere through challenges and setbacks without complaint and defer instant gratification in order to reach a set goal.
  9. Independence: The ability to think and act for oneself; to take responsibility for and stand behind one’s beliefs and actions; to explore the world confidently and carefully and to find support when necessary.
  10. Intercultural Competence: The desire and ability to behave and communicate effectively within and across cultures, to view issues from other perspectives, and to collaborate and engage in decision-making processes with diverse groups.