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Michigan Tech Essential Education Seminars prepare students for Success

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>.




Essential Education is here! Your guide to the new curriculum

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.

CTL and Essential Education Lunch and Learn

Make plans to attend a Lunch and Learn hosted by the William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and Essential Education at Michigan Tech.

The Lunch and Learn is titled “Building an Essential Ed Experience: (Re)Designing Your Course to Become an E3.”

When: Tuesday, March 4, from 12-1 p.m.
Where: MUB Ballroom A
Registration: Register to Attend the Lunch and Learn (registration is required).
Interested in designing and teaching an Essential Education Experience (E3)? Join E3 leadership and fellow instructors for a course redesign workshop. E3 courses should prepare students for an ever-changing, dynamic and diverse world by increasing social awareness, global understandings and/or cultural competencies through hands-on learning. Students will apply their learning toward a project or activity that engages with community beyond the traditional classroom.

This workshop will cover the basics of E3 requirements and provide participants time to workshop with others an existing or proposed Essential Education Experience course, while learning more about practical tools for transforming their own courses into E3s. Faculty who are interested in E3 courses but don’t have a specific course in mind yet are welcome to attend and can expect to gain insights that will aid in future course development.

Lunch will be provided to those who register.

For questions or to request accommodations, including dietary, please feel free to contact the CTL at ctl@mtu.edu or 906-487-3000.