CUE2 Background and Charge

To ensure Johns Hopkins continues to evolve and improve the way it prepares undergraduate students for future success, President Daniels and Provost Kumar convened a Second Commission on Higher Education (CUE2) in 2017. Building upon the work completed by the inaugural Commission on Undergraduate Education in 2002, CUE2’s charge was to interpret the mission of an undergraduate education in the 21st century and develop a new model that will serve us for the next decade or more. The commission was asked to think broadly and creatively about (1) how to support and encourage students to define their own education by allowing them to explore and pursue their own interests, (2) how to create a holistic curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular experience, and (3) how to develop the pedagogy and infrastructure needed to support these objectives. The commission was urged to be fearless in questioning the assumptions behind traditional models and approaches and be ambitious with its recommendations.

Over the course of three years, the Commission, comprised of nearly 30 faculty, staff, undergraduate students, and alumni analyzed and evaluated peer best practices, recommendations from external higher education experts, relevant institutional data, scholarly literature and community feedback obtained through multiple channels (town halls, email submissions, focus groups). Those deliberations culminated in a draft report that was shared with the Hopkins community in early 2020. Relevant feedback was incorporated into the final report, which was released in November 2020.