Each core community will build their mission and goals around these student competencies and their content specialty.
Student Competencies
Communication:
Northwest students will understand the role of writing and speaking in living and learning.
They will:
- Use speaking and writing to respond effectively to a variety of purposes and audiences.
- Understand the relationship between form and content in speaking and writing.
- Speak and write in a variety of genres and media.
- Use visuals, non-alphabetic text, and non-verbal components successfully within spoken and written texts.
- Speak and write individually and as a part of a team to accomplish individual and team goals.
- Use research effectively in spoken and written texts.
- Analyze and evaluate their own and others' speaking and writing.
Critical Thinking:
Northwest students will engage in disciplined thought to generate and communicate ideas.
They will:
- Assimilate, retain, and interpret information.
- Utilize information to generate reasonable hypotheses and draw educated conclusions.
- Elucidate solutions based on these conclusions with the ability to self-evaluate their effectiveness.
- Recognize that this process is self-reflective and continuous.
- Produce original expression of ideas.
Managing Information:
Northwest students will locate, retrieve, organize, store, synthesize, and annotate various forms of information.
They will:
- Access and generate information using contemporary technologies.
- Evaluate information for currency, usefulness, and accuracy.
- Reorganize information for purpose.
- Present information clearly.
Valuing:
Northwest students will understand the formation and context of values.
They will:
- Evaluate the difference between true and false beliefs, right and wrong actions, as well as those values that underlie artistic expression and make appropriate decisions based on these values.
- Compare historical and cultural value perspectives recognizing to these cultural perspectives.
- Recognize the ramifications of value decisions of self and others particularly in team environments.
- Consider multiple perspectives, recognize biases, deal with ambiguity, and form and defend reasoned positions.