AAC&U officers and staff regularly travel throughout the country, and occasionally the world, to speak and consult at AAC&U member schools through seminars, institutes, and workshops as well as in more informal gatherings. AAC&U staff also regularly speak on the value of liberal education at various media and public affairs events. These meetings are an opportunity for the membership to influence the direction of AAC&U's initiatives. We look forward to seeing you the next time we are on your campus.

On December 4th, AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider visited Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts to participate as a judge in WPI's 2002 President's Interactive Quality Project (IQP) Award selection process. The project challenges students to identify, investigate, and report on a self-selected topic examining how science or technology interacts with societal structures and values.

On November 1, Caryn McTighe Musil, AAC&U vice president for Diversity, Equity and Global Initiatives delivered the keynote luncheon address at the University of Scranton, for their conference, Education for Justice: Developing Strategies for a Richly Diverse Community. The one-day conference drew some 150 people from higher education, business, health care, and community based groups. Musil was also a featured speaker at the Campus Compact Summit at the beginning of November in Providence, RI. She addressed diversity issues in service learning. The Summit brought 400 people from campuses that had committed to service learning and to broader goals of civic engagement.

Senior Scholar Jerry Gaff attended an Institute on Teaching and Mentoring sponsored by the Compact for Faculty Diversity, a collaboration of three regional consortia of states in the South, West, and Northeast. The Institute is the largest national meeting of graduate students of color-more than 500 students attended along with several of their faculty mentors.

Ross Miller, director of the Office of Education and Quality Initiatives attended the National Education Association Foundation's Symposium, "Using Data to Improve Professional Development for Educators" on November 8-9. Individuals from both schools and colleges attended, many as teams formed while working on projects funded through NEA Foundation grants.

Vice President for Education and Quality Initiatives Andrea Leskes attended a York College (PA) faculty retreat in Port Deposit, MD. She spoke to the faculty about contemporary trends in general education and also about the Greater Expectations vision for a New Academy. Leskes also presented at a New York City Conference Board-National Alliance of Business meeting on K-16 alignment for better student achievement. Attendees included more than 200 members of the corporate sector and representatives of corporate foundations interested in education. Also in November, Leskes presented on the Greater Expectations National Panel report, Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College to the Independent Educational Consultants Association in Washington, DC.

Working with Robert Shoenberg, AAC&U senior fellow, Leskes also organized a panel at the FIPSE directors' meeting in Washington, DC in late November at which she discussed Greater Expectations. Other panelists shared examples from the project on general education and transfer (funded by FIPSE) and from two GEx leadership institutions illustrating elements of the New Academy described in the GEx National Panel Report.