AAC&U News | November 2004

AAC&U Launches New Assessment Resource Web Page

With assessment and accountability high on many agendas, AAC&U has launched a new Web page with resources to help campuses improve their assessment plans and respond to external calls for greater accountability. From this page, viewers can access information about AAC&U projects and meetings related to assessment as well as promising assessment models and resources from institutions and leaders in the field. This page also features AAC&U’s many assessment publications, including AAC&U’s board statement on assessment and accountability, Our Students’ Best Work: A Framework for Accountability Worthy of Our Mission. Also on the page is information about and excerpts from Taking Responsibility for the Quality of the Baccalaureate Degree, a publication from AAC&U’s Greater Expectations initiative that documents the emerging consensus among regional and specialized accreditors about the importance of key liberal learning outcomes for all students.

AAC&U’s 2005 Annual Meeting to Explore “Liberal Education and the New Academy”

AAC&U’s 2005 Annual Meeting--“Liberal Education and the New Academy: Raising Expectations, Keeping Promises”--will be held January 26-29, 2005, in San Francisco, California. A pre-conference symposium, “Working Convergences: Liberal Education, Creativity, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit,” is scheduled for Wednesday, January 26. The opening and closing plenary speakers will be Lee Shulman of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Lani Guinier of the Harvard Law School. The conference will open Wednesday evening with a public forum on “Degrees of Mediocrity, Degrees of Excellence,” with discussion led by John Merrow of The Merrow Report, which airs on PBS and NPR. For a complete schedule of events and registration information, visit the 2005 Annual Meeting Web pages.

Registration Forms for 2005 “General Education and Assessment” and “Pedagogies of Engagement” Conferences Go Online

Registration forms for two upcoming Network for Academic Renewal conferences are now online. “General Education and Assessment: Creating Responsibility for Learning Across the Curriculum” will be held February 17-19, 2005, in Atlanta Georgia, and “Pedagogies of Engagement: Deepening Learning In and Across the Disciplines” will be held April 14-16, 2005, in Bethesda, Maryland. Additional information about each conference, including registration information, is available on the conference Web pages.

New Peer Review Focuses on Quantitative Literacy

Watch your mail for the next issue of Peer Review, which offers a primer on quantitative literacy in college today. The issue features articles on the relationship between quantitative literacy and mathematics, different curricular models, and related college readiness issues.

Diversity Digest Considers the Impact of Brown v. Board on Higher Education

The latest issue of Diversity Digest examines the lasting legacy of Brown v. Board of Education. The issue challenges us to consider the multiple ways that the Brown decision has affected our lives and our communities. More than an education-based legal decision, Brown significantly altered the evolving landscape of American racial, social, political, and cultural life.

AAC&U Partners on FYI/Film Your Issue

AAC&U is partnering with FYI/Film Your Issue to encourage college students to use film as a mechanism to illuminate important social issues locally, nationally, or globally. Any student at an AAC&U campus is eligible for the competition. Entrants are invited to submit thirty- to sixty-second live-action or animated films that use a contemporary issue as a way of engaging young adults in public dialogue. The deadline for film submissions is March 7, 2005. The winning entry will be broadcast on MtvU and the semi-finalists will be hosted on Microsoft’s MSNVideo. For more information about the competition, visit the FYI/Film Your Issue Web site. FYI/Film Your Issue is sponsored by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives, where AAC&U’s Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement is housed.

IEL and AAC&U Appoint Fall Faculty Fellows

The Institute for Experiential Learning (IEL) and AAC&U have appointed professors Martin Cadee and Cynthia Sutton as faculty fellows for the fall semester. Cadee, who is managing director of the faculty of philosophy at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, is interning at the National Council for Science and the Environment, and Sutton, who is an associate professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, is spending her semester at the Center for Law and Education. More information about the Faculty Fellows Internship Program is available on IEL’s Web site; a press release announcing the appointment is also online.