Assumption’s CTEQ Program Achieves Charter Member Status by American Academy for Liberal Education

Assumption’s Fortin-Gonthier Core Texts & Enduring Questions (CTEQ) program has been selected for membership as a Charter Member by the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE). According to the Academy, its mission is to promote excellence in liberal education by providing recognition of schools and programs that maintain the highest standards of liberal arts learning. 

“Assumption’s acceptance as a Charter Member of the Academy for Liberal Education is a testament to the institution’s commitment to the liberal arts and forming thoughtful and humanly engaged graduates,” said Marc Guerra, Ph.D., professor of theology and director of the CTEQ Program. “The CTEQ Program provides students—whether they are majoring in the humanities, sciences, or pre-professional programs—with a truly integrated and intellectually rich interdisciplinary liberal arts experience. The Program helps students hone the kinds of critical thinking and communication skills that they will continually need in their private and professional lives. However, CTEQ ultimately does more than that.  At its core, the program invites students to think deeply and seriously about who they are as human persons and about the kind of dignified and purposeful lives they want to live. Offering students that kind of humanizing pedagogical opportunity has always been a hallmark of an Assumption education.”  

In approving the application, the AALE’s Board of Trustees recognized that the CTEQ program fulfilled key requirements for membership including:

• program possesses a mission statement emphasizing the importance of liberal education; 
• program fosters learning objectives encouraging ability to reason and communicate effectively and inclination to inquire; 
• program offers a curriculum designed to acquaint students in rigorous and substantial ways with broad and integrated knowledge of the liberal arts; 
• and program promotes the importance of teaching and the use of instructional practices suitable to liberal education. 

As a Charter Member of the AALE, Assumption’s CTEQ Program will collaborate with other institutions of higher learning to create effective means by which to articulate the value of a liberal education; create assessment tools that measure the value of a liberal education through outcomes; and promote liberal education to high school-aged students who seek to pursue a liberal education.

For more information on the Core Texts & Enduring Questions Program, please visit the Assumption website.