REAL initiative

Let us hear from you

We're always looking for input on REAL - your thoughts, your concerns, what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. So please, feel free to let us know your feedback by filling out our online comment form.

What is REAL?

Above all, VCU's Relevant, Experiential and Applied Learning represents a promise. To our students, its a promise to engage you in meaningful, hands-on work directly relevant to both your personal and to addressing today's social, scientific, and economic challenges.

For our faculty and university professionals, REAL is a promise for support as you create unique ways to provide these types of meaningful experiences for our students. We believe the REAL initiative works best as an organic, faculty-driven and student-led process.

REAL is not a hard reset; instead, it’s an intentional organizing of the types of career-building and civic-minded activities that VCU already does well.

Proposed REAL characteristics

While we continue to work with our academic units to shape the final definition of what will constitute a REAL activity, we propose that these activities have some combination of these four characteristics in common:

Hands-on opportunities that apply disciplinary knowledge in real-world contexts
Guided reflections that articulate personal, civic/social or academic learning
A mentorship model where a faculty member or activity supervisor respond regularly to student work
Integrative learning as a specific measure of a student's capacity for social consciousness

Recent news

A collection of recent articles about REAL:

REAL next steps

REAL goals for the spring 2019 semester include:

Completing our opportunities audit to capture comprehensive data record about current experiential learning
Convert short-term task force to standing REAL council, charged with establishing criteria for categorizing experiential learning activities
Hold a follow-up workshop with campus partners and academic units