Center for Civic Excellence at USU Set to Start Courses in Fall 2026

With the final approval from the Utah Board of Higher Education at its meeting Thursday, Utah State University’s Center for Civic Excellence is set to begin course offerings in fall of 2026.

“This is the most transformative general education reform effort in decades,” said Harrison Kleiner, vice provost over Undergraduate Education at Utah State.

Passed during the 2025 Utah legislative session, Senate Bill 334 requires and provides initial funding for the creation of a Center for Civic Excellence at Utah State University to govern and assess general education curriculum. Gen Ed courses will be taught through the center as one coherent academic program instead of distributing that delivery and governance across colleges and departments.

The center will engage students in civil and rigorous inquiry across ideological differences, with a commitment to intellectual freedom in the pursuit of truth. This will be done through engagement with foundational primary texts representing the best of what has been thought and said, ensuring that all graduates, regardless of their major, engage with the big questions, great debates and enduring ideas that continue to shape society's self-understanding, the American experience, and the modern world. The overarching goal is to cultivate students' intellectual and personal habits of mind to enable the students to contribute and thrive in their economic, social, political and personal lives with a focus on civil discourse, critical thinking about enduring questions, wise decision-making and durable skills.

To deliver on these promises, the Center for Civic Excellence is creating an entirely new, purpose-built collection of courses across the nine general education designation areas prescribed in Utah System of Higher Education Policy R470. Over the past 8 months, there has been intensive engagement with faculty across the university to build out the new program and courses. To develop program goals and a broad framework of courses, administrators responsible for developing the center met with 275 faculty last spring for brainstorming sessions, then involved 58 faculty on various working groups over the summer who developed those ideas into a coherent program of study. Faculty groups will work through March 2026 fully building out the courses.

In the fall of 2026, Utah State will begin offering around 75 sections of new courses across the general education areas and will ramp up offerings over the next few years while phasing out existing general education offerings.

In October 2025, the Utah Board of Higher Education approved policy R405 (Academic Centers and Institutes), which requires the Board to approve all new centers and institutes at the degree-granting institutions.