Advising to develop self-reliance. Students of the New Academy will be actively engaged with the process of their learning. The nearly 60 percent who move from college to college will profit most from assuming personal responsibility for assembling a coherent whole from disparate parts. The multiple institutions in which they enroll are unlikely do it for them. As these peripatetic students find their way through educational forests, they require figurative maps (the reasons for taking specific courses and their learning expectations) and map-reading skills. Many pathways may exist for reaching their goals. By understanding the topographical elements of the map and orienting themselves as to their starting points and desired ends, they can select appropriate routes. Teaching these map-reading and navigation skills is the job of advisors in this new learning-centered environment. Institutions define the topographical elements (explain the learning expected to result from their programs). However, greater student responsibility for charting a course through the learning process by no means relieves the faculty of its duty to design coherent curricula. Nor does it relieve the institutions themselves of the need to dismantle barriers standing in the way of connected and versatile learning. In fact, nation-wide solutions to cross-institutional advising, record keeping, and certification may evolve over time in the New Academy.

Practicing what it preaches: the intentional college or university. Colleges and universities of the New Academy will support curricula and teaching by strategic use of their resources. Building a culture centered on learning is the job of presidents and their senior staffs. Their commitment to reinvigorated liberal education guides the choice of faculty, programs, and directions. This institutional purpose, mirroring the intentionality of students and the coherence of the curriculum, builds on operations and systems aligned with the institution's mission. Curricular and cocurricular programs mutually reinforce one another. Both in continuing operations and times of special self-reflection—strategic planning, reaccreditation, capital campaigns—campuses keep their eyes on the prize.

All members of the campus community share language to describe its learning-centered culture. The institution's central purpose is evident in communications to prospective students and in presidential addresses. A diverse community, paired with an education that values the experiences of all individuals and groups, is central to the strategy.

Faculty members on a learning-centered campus make a collective commitment to high quality education. The concept of "my work," so characteristic of the present educational culture, becomes "our work," with the entire faculty assuming responsibility for the entire curriculum.⁵⁶ The "saying" and "doing" of the institution coincide, fostered by open conversation, joint action, and appropriate reward systems. In terms of its operations, the institution itself becomes a life-long learner, continuously evaluating and assessing itself at all levels, then feeding the results back into improvement loops for both student learning and campus processes.

In the transition period, as the new culture of learning-centered education expands, faculties will need assurance of the institution's serious commitment. Colleges and universities with learning as the center of their work provide professors with every means possible to teach, advise, and mentor their students well. User friendly and extensive programs of faculty development help them also become professional educators.

No one model of intentional operation applies to all colleges and universities. Quite the contrary. Various missions, cultures, histories, and student bodies shape a range of examples. While, in the New Academy, all campuses will have goals for the kind of learning students need (and the goals themselves may well be similar), the emphases, balance between them, and plan for their achievement might differ radically. Whereas all institutions will recognize the importance of evaluation and continuous improvement, local methods may be more effective than external, standardized ones. As in student learning, the overall hope is for high standards without standardization. The relevant metaphor is one of multiple paths winding up the mountain to greater student achievement.