December 2004  

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.


Alma Clayton-Pedersen, AAC&U vice president for education and institutional renewal, facilitated a faculty seminar and consulted with campus leaders on diversity, inclusion, and academic excellence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on November 18 and 19. On December 1, Clayton-Pedersen served as a judge for the President's Interactive Qualifying Project Awards at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The awards recognize the student team whose conception, performance, and presentation of their IQP has been judged outstanding in focusing on the relationships among science, technology, and the needs of society.



Daniel Hiroyuki Teraguchi, director of the Program for Health and Higher Education (PHHE), attended a joint Hampton University and Stony Brook University conference on HIV/AIDS and other critical health issues today. The conference was held at Hampton University on November 20. Both Hampton University and Stony Brook University received grants through PHHE's Project PITCH (Partners in Teaching Community Health) initiative.

AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider presented this year's Louise McBee Lecture at the University of Georgia on December 8. She spoke on "Liberal Education in an Era of Greater Expectations" to a group of university leaders, faculty members, alumni, and friends and also met with a task force reviewing student learning. "Liberal education has been and remains the nation's premier educational tradition," she said, "But it is an open question whether the millions of students now flocking to higher education will actually experience a liberal education." Students are missing the essential point that the economy now both demands and rewards the capacities developed through liberal education, she said.