Essential Education Newsblog

Month: September 2025

Building Bridges: Michigan Tech & Keweenaw Community Foundation Collaborate on Essential Ed Experiences

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Beginning early in 2025, Michigan Tech University and the Keweenaw Community Foundation (KCF) co-hosted a series of community focus groups, bringing together more than 50 local organizations to explore how MTU students and faculty can engage meaningfully with the local community. The discussions, centered around the university’s new Essential Education Experiences (E3) program, highlighted ways to connect classroom learning with hands-on service opportunities while ensuring that collaborations are mutually beneficial for both students and community partners.

Michigan Tech Essential Education Experiences are a new type of course, launching this Fall 2025, designed to provide students with a transformative education that integrates civic engagement, interdisciplinary learning, and real-world problem-solving. Through hands-on learning projects outside of the traditional classroom, these courses will equip students with the skills needed to navigate a rapidly changing world while fostering meaningful partnerships with local organizations. 

Leading the effort is Cassandra Reed-VanDam, the E3 manager at Michigan Tech, who emphasized the importance of fostering long-term relationships between the university and the local community.

“These focus groups allowed us to hear directly from community partners about their priorities and how Michigan Tech can collaborate in meaningful ways,” said Reed-VanDam. “We want to ensure that these projects are valuable not only for student learning, but also for the organizations and constituents they serve.”

A Collaborative Approach to Community-Engaged Learning

Held at the KCF office Community Room located in the Hancock Community Hub, with one session taking place in Keweenaw County, each focus group centered on different themes, including education, arts and culture, government and social services, and environmental stewardship. Participants engaged in thoughtful conversations about how students could support local initiatives through coursework, research, and volunteerism.

“When we learned more about the MTU E3 program, we saw an excellent opportunity to help provide capacity and support to our community partners while helping students and faculty at MTU engage locally. The ‘mutual benefit’ value alignment drew us in to partner with MTU, and we are looking forward to the future of this new initiative,” stated Robin Meneguzzo, KCF Executive Director.

The sessions allowed community leaders, nonprofit organizations, and faculty members to identify key areas where student involvement could make a difference. Ideas ranged from helping local museums develop digital content and improving nonprofit social media strategies to tackling environmental challenges and mentoring local youth.

Additionally, discussions explored ways to enhance student engagement, align project timelines with academic calendars, and improve logistical support such as transportation and funding. Many organizations shared insights on fostering structured communication channels with the university and developing effective long-term planning for student projects to ensure successful collaborations.

Looking Ahead: Next Steps for Collaboration

As Michigan Tech continues to refine the Essential Education Experiences program, the insights gained from these focus groups will help shape its structure. Potential next steps include developing a formalized project matching system to pair faculty and students with community needs more effectively, strengthening communication platforms to ensure that expectations and responsibilities are clear on both sides and establishing long-term partnerships between faculty and local organizations to create sustainable, impactful projects.

These conversations mark the beginning of an evolving collaboration between Michigan Tech, the Keweenaw Community Foundation, and the broader community. By working together, students can gain real-world experience while making a meaningful difference in our local community.

For community partners, this initiative represents an opportunity to gain actionable insights, develop creative solutions, and receive valuable support from Michigan Tech. As the program develops, local organizations are encouraged to stay involved and continue shaping the future of community engagement at MTU. 

If you would like to join the E3 Community of Practice here on campus, please contact Cassandra Reed-VanDam (cmvandam@mtu.edu), the Essential Education Experience Manager at Michigan Tech.

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Michigan Tech Essential Education Seminars prepare students for Success

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Starting college is a pivotal moment, and at Michigan Tech, we’ve designed a first-semester experience to help new students navigate it successfully. The Michigan Tech Seminar in Essential Education, offered through a wide variety of introductory courses, helps students not only get acclimated but also chart their academic journey, practice reflection, and build a sense of community. This isn’t just another class; it’s an integrated experience with core modules that are adapted by instructors to fit the unique needs of different majors.

The seminar is built on three key pillars:

Essential Education: these modules help students understand the “why” behind their education. By introducing Michigan Tech’s Essential Abilities, students are prompted to reflect on our key learning outcomes and their own strengths and areas for growth. This self-assessment is more than an exercise; it’s a tool for creating a unique academic plan. Students are encouraged to explore a wide range of opportunities early on, including Essential Ed minors, undergraduate research opportunities, study away programs, and student organizations, helping them set concrete goals and map out a pathway to achieve them.

Husky Folio: Michigan Tech’s pedagogical approach to helping students recognize, reflect on, and collect evidence of their learning, is a powerful tool for career readiness. The Husky Folio modules introduce students to the practice of documenting and reflecting on their learning. Through a series of assignments, students learn how to use our Husky Folio platform to tell the story of their academic and personal growth. This is valuable practice not only for future classes but also for preparing them to articulate their skills and experiences in a job interview.

Husky Life: The Husky Life modules focus on crucial aspects of student success: academics, community, and wellbeing. These modules connect students with vital campus resources and encourage them to build relationships with peers, faculty, and staff. Instructors can tailor assignments to fit specific professional development needs, with many sections focusing on resume building and departmental networking. The modules also address key life skills, with instructors able to choose topics like time management, stress reduction, and coping with loneliness, ensuring a holistic approach to student wellness.

Because we recognize that transfer students have unique needs, a seminar specifically designed for these students was also developed. Evidence suggests that a significant number of our transfer students may face academic challenges, with nearly half having a GPA of 2.5 or lower (about 33% of our total Michigan Tech undergraduate student population have a GPA below 2.5). We know that having a sense of belonging on campus contributes to academic success for students. (https://www.ihep.org/publication/student-experience-and-belonging-strong-outcomes/) Through the Michigan Transfer Seminar, we are working to build community among new transfer students while also helping them learn about campus resources and plan for their future, ensuring they have the support they need to succeed.

The success of the seminar is a testament to strong cross-unit collaboration. Developed by faculty from diverse academic disciplines as well as student affairs staff, this partnership has created a seamless introduction to campus life, beginning with summer orientation and continuing through the fall semester. This collaborative effort also resulted in a $650,000 State of Michigan MiLEAP College Success grant, which will support continued development of the modules and innovative teaching practices over the next three years.

The seminar also serves as an incubator for new ideas in curriculum design. The shared modules are designed to be both structured and flexible, allowing them to be effective in courses ranging from small seminars to large lectures and in subjects as varied as Engineering Analysis, First Year Arts Seminar, Explorations in Computing, and Natural Resource Professional. This adaptability ensures that students across all disciplines receive a high-quality, relevant experience.

You can learn more about the shared seminar modules and other seminar-related programming through the “Essential Education Resource Hub for Instructors” in Canvas <Essential Ed Resource Hub for Instructors> Courses that serve as seminar courses can be found on our Michigan Tech Essential Education website <Program Requirements | Essential Education | Michigan Tech>.




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What’s New with the Essential Education Minors?

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Our new Essential Education minors, launching this fall, are built directly into the Essential Education curriculum. They offer a unique opportunity to explore a specific theme through a variety of disciplinary perspectives. By design, they are a seamless addition to a student’s degree, allowing them to broaden their perspective and complement their major without adding to their credit load. 

Each Essential Ed minor allows students to engage with a variety of perspectives and disciplines, incorporating courses from specific categories in the curriculum. These include a communication-intensive course, an intercultural competency course, and a selection of courses from the humanities, arts, social sciences, and business (SHAPE). A key feature is the flexibility for students to customize their coursework within the minor’s theme, allowing them to align their learning with their personal and career goals. The Essential Education Curriculum page <https://www.mtu.edu/essential-ed/overview/curriculum/> includes more specific information about the requirements each minor must meet. As part of their minor pathway, students will create an ePortfolio through Husky Folio, allowing them to reflect on and integrate their learning journey. 

We are excited to announce that the following Essential Ed minors are in the final stages of approval: 

  • AI Ethics
  • Creativity & Expression
  • Economics & Society
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Human-Centered Design
  • Leadership
  • Population Health
  • Public Policy & Law
  • Sustainability Studies

Stay tuned for a deeper dive into each of these themes in the coming weeks. In the meantime, get a sneak peek into the vision behind these minors by watching this video:  <Michigan Tech’s Essential Education Minors – Launch 2025>. 

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Essential Education is here! Your guide to the new curriculum

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This fall marks the official launch of Essential Education, a new general education program that began as a part of Tech Forward 1.0 conversations seven years ago. Essential Ed represents a strategic evolution of our curriculum, and we’re dedicated to helping you navigate it.

Every Thursday this academic year, we’ll use Tech Today to highlight the many components of Essential Education. You’ll get a closer look at the key elements, and we’ll share the accompanying programs and resources designed to assist instructors, community partners, and in navigating this new curriculum.

For a deeper dive into any topic, visit the Essential Education News Blog . We’ve already developed a number of resources to get you started:

  • What is Michigan Tech’s Essential Education? The Essential Ed website provides a comprehensive overview of the program’s core elements.
  • Introducing HuskyFolio powered by PebblePad. Learn about the value of Folio Thinking and how the new HuskyFolio platform will be gradually integrated into the curriculum at the HuskyFolio website .
  • Essential Education Minors – Find the current list of minors. Degree audits will be linked here once they are finalized.
  • Essential Education Experiences – Get all the details on the new Essential Education Experiences website.
  • Essential Education Resource Hub for Instructors – If you are teaching an Essential Ed course, this Resource Hub is your one-stop-shop in Canvas. It offers step-by-step guidance—including a Course Setup Guide, instructions for Instructor EA reporting and HuskyFolio—as well as specialized tools and support for course lists, Essential Abilities, large-class teaching, and more.
  • Essential Education YouTube Channel – Our new channel features videos you can use in the classroom or just to learn more about Essential Ed, featuring corporate partners discussing the value of Essential Abilities, highlights from our first symposium, and more. We’ll be adding new content all year to showcase how Essential – Education prepares our students for success.

If you ever miss a Thursday Update, just check the Essential Education News Blog to catch up and continue exploring this signature program.

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