ConnectED

ConnectED literacies

In his 2022 State of Academic Affairs Address, Provost Fotis Sotiropoulos challenged the VCU community to "re-imagine what [general education] needs to look like to prepare our students for the future of work."

Central to the provost's vision was the introduction of three foundational literacies into the ConnectED program:

    • Racial literacy: Courses within this literacy will ask students to identify, engage, and contextualize ongoing structures of racialized power and privilege. Racial literacy will become a required component of ConnectED for all students in fall 2023.
    • Computational literacy: A work group has been convened to determine the criteria for computational literacy courses, with the goal of incorporating this literacy into ConnectED by fall 2025.
    • Entrepreneural literacy: Likewise, a work group has also been convened to determine the criteria for entrepreneural literacy courses, with the goal of incorporating this literacy into ConnectED by fall 2025.

Learn more about each of these literacies by visiting their respective webpages. These pages will be updated with additional information as work on these literacies evolves.

General Education Structure Work Group

In addition to the Computational Literacy and Entrepreneurial Literacy Work Groups mentioned above, a third work group was also convened in March 2022. The General Education Structure Work Group will provide recommendations on how to incorporate these two new literacies while maintaining a broad-based general education curriculum.

State of Academic Affairs Address

See Provost's Sotiropoulos' comments on general education at the State of Academic Affairs Address:

Provost Sotiropoulos: "I have challenged our General Education committee and our entire community to re-imagine what the VCU GenEd needs to look like to prepare our students for the future of work.

A General Education that, in addition to the fundamental course work that forms the bedrock of a VCU education, is flexible and agile enough to incorporate foundational literacies in racial justice, computational thinking, and entrepreneurship. To continue adapting to meet our students where they are in a rapidly changing world.

I am really proud of the work so many of you have done at all levels that will allow us to introduce the new course on Racial Literacy as a required GenEd course for ALL VCU students in Fall 2023.

And I have already charged our GenEd committee to identify the flexibilities and imagine the curricular structures that will allow us to incorporate new foundational literacies in Computing and Entrepreneurship for ALL VCU students by Fall 2025.