Washington State University Vancouver was formally established in 1989 as a branch campus of the state's land-grant institution and opened its own campus in 1996. Currently, WSU Vancouver, with an enrollment of 1369 FTE and a fulltime faculty of more than 90, offers junior, senior and graduate level courses in more than 35 fields of study.

Beginning in Fall 2006, Washington State University Vancouver became a four-year institution, admitting freshmen and sophomores for the first time. This has provided the campus with a unique opportunity to custom design a General Education curriculum that values student-centered, active learning and the engagement of students and faculty with real-world concerns. In addition to implementing electronic portfolios (ePortfolios), unique features of the General Education program include an interdisciplinary core linked to a unifying campus theme, linking among all courses, and a commitment to outcomes-based learning designed around six learning goals. Librarians, as faculty, were involved in the planning for this new curriculum and are excited about the centrality of information literacy to the General Education program.

Courses within the program are designed around six Learning Goals: Critical Thinking, Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning, Information Literacy, Communication, Self in Society, and Specialty. Each Learning Goal has specific outcomes that will be evaluated through the use of rubrics developed by an Assessment Committee. The outcomes for the Information Literacy Goal are based on the Information Literacy Competency Standards developed by ACRL. As students progress within the General Education Program, they will be asked, at specified times, to provide evidence of and reflection on their progress in each of the Learning Goals. Progress within a course will be evaluated by the teaching faculty. Progress, as part of program assessment, will be evaluated by an assessment team.

All General Education courses will need to address the Learning Goals; however, the three one-credit courses which emphasize Information Literacy are the required ePortfolio courses. The ePortfolio is seen as an integral part of the General Education program at WSU Vancouver and three 1-credit courses have been designed for students to have a place (in both space and time) to make specific connections among the disciplinary and interdisciplinary content of their education as a whole. These courses have been designed by a team of faculty and information technologists lead by a librarian.

As the campus worked on designing the General Education Program and then looked at practical aspects like the large number of transfer students, budgetary concerns, and others, the program naturally went through many changes. It is worth noting, however, that the information literacy goal, the emphasis of this goal in required courses, and the integral involvement of library faculty in course development remained. As Librarians, we saw the results, demonstrated in a very real way, of all of that advice that we receive at library conferences. How many times have we heard "get out of the library", "get involved", "stay involved", "devote real staff/faculty time to campus-wide projects"? It really does work to raise the visibility of the Library and to achieve a true integration of information literacy into the curriculum - outcomes that will greatly benefit our students.

For more information about the General Education Program at WSU Vancouver, see: http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/gen_ed/