AAC&U Launches Advocacy and Campus-Action Campaign for Lliberal Education at 90th Anniversary Annual Meeting

At the AAC&U Annual Meeting in San Francisco, more than 1,400 educational leaders celebrated the Association's 90 years of leadership for liberal education and learned about AAC&U's new campaign, Liberal Education and America's Promise: Excellence for Everyone as a Nation Goes to College (LEAP). Designed to champion the value of an engaged liberal education for individual students and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality, the campaign will expand public and student understanding of what really matters in college--the kinds of learning that will truly empower individuals to succeed and make a difference in the 21st century. Conceived as a decade-long initiative, LEAP will be organized in concert with policy and business leaders, the media, campuses, and prospective students and their parents. The work of the campaign began at the meeting, where AAC&U members discussed the implications of focus groups of college and prospective college students commissioned by AAC&U in preparation for the campaign's launch and discussed ways that campuses might become effective advocates for liberal education on and off their campuses.

Azar Nafisi Receives Ness Book Award for Reading Lolita in Tehran

The 2005 Frederic W. Ness Book Award was given to Azar Nafisi for Reading Lolita in Tehran (Random House), Nafisi's acclaimed memoir about reading prohibited Western literature with a group of female students at her home in Tehran. The Ness Award is given every year for the book that best illuminates the goals and practices of a contemporary liberal education; this year's award was presented at AAC&U's Annual Meeting. For more information, see the press release announcing the award.

AAC&U Releases New Reports on Assessment and Integrative Learning

General Education and the Assessment Reform Agenda, a new Academy in Transition paper by national assessment expert Peter Ewell, reflects on the challenges of general education and assessment reform in the context of recent calls for accountability in higher education. The paper argues that by focusing on abilities, alignment, assessment, and action, campuses can both improve general education programs and demonstrate student achievement of learning outcomes key to success in the twenty-first century.

AAC&U and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have published Integrative Learning: Mapping the Terrain, a paper by Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings that explores the challenges to integrative learning today as well as its longer tradition and rationale within a vision of liberal education. Readers of this Academy in Transition paper will find a map of the terrain of integrative learning on which promising new developments in undergraduate education can be cultivated, learned from, and built upon.

Both papers can be purchased on AAC&U's publications page.

Registration for General Education and Assessment Conference to Continue On-site

"General Education and Assessment: Creating Shared Responsibility for Learning Across the Curriculum," an AAC&U Network for Academic Renewal Conference, will be held February 17-19 in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference will explore how campuses are cultivating and assessing important outcomes across the curriculum and across institutions. Registrations will be accepted on-site at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead (3300 Peach Tree Road NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30305) through Saturday, February 19; about 500 participants have already registered.

Register Now for Pedagogies of Engagement Conference

"Pedagogies of Engagement: Deepening Learning In and Across the Disciplines," a Network for Academic Renewal Conference examining emerging practices to increase students' engagement in their learning, will take place April 14-16 in the greater Washington, DC area (Bethesda, Maryland). The hotel conference rate will be available through March 23, but we recommend you make your reservations as early as possible. Once the AAC&U room block is sold out (often well before the cut-off date), the discounted rate will no longer apply.

AAC&U Invites Proposals for Integrative Learning Conference

AAC&U invites proposals for "Integrative Learning: Creating Opportunities to Connect," a Network for Academic Renewal conference to be held October 20-22 in Denver, Colorado. The conference will explore ways of helping undergraduates to integrate learning--across courses, among disciplines, over time, and between knowledge and practice--and to develop habits of mind that prepare them for the challenges of personal, professional, and civic life. Interested faculty, academic administrators, student affairs professionals, graduate students, and others can submit proposals for approaches that offer students purposeful, progressively challenging integrative learning experiences in and out of the classroom. The call for proposals is available online; proposals must be submitted by February 18.

Register Now for Annual Working Conference of Bringing Theory to Practice

Faculty members, students, and administrators who are interested in exploring how the academic strengths of the institution can help address the connection among student learning, health, and civic development are invited to attend the Bringing Theory to Practice Working Conference. The conference will be held April 15 and 16 in the greater Washington, DC area (Bethesda, Maryland), in partnership with AAC&U's Pedagogies of Engagement conference (see above). Registration forms are online.

Apply Now for 2005 Institute on General Education

Applications are now being accepted for the 2005 AAC&U Institute on General Education. This year's institute, planned for May 20-25 in Newport, Rhode Island, will offer an intellectually stimulating environment to advance campus planning in general education. Additional information, including an institute brochure and application form, is available online. The deadline for applications is February 25, 2005.

5th Annual Greater Expectations Institute Accepting Applications

AAC&U invites applications to the 5th annual Greater Expectations Institute, "Campus Leadership for Student Engagement, Inclusion, and Achievement," to be held June 22-26, 2005, in Burlington, Vermont. Campus leadership teams come to the institute to advance a specific educational change project related to the engagement, inclusion, and high achievement of all students. Teams will confer with expert faculty; refine planning and processes; clarify outcomes; and develop a concrete plan for campus action. The deadline for applications is March 15, 2005.

AAC&U Cosponsors Wye Faculty Seminar with Aspen Institute

The Wye Faculty Seminar, an interdisciplinary seminar designed to help professors relate their teaching to broad issues of citizenship in the American polity, will be held July 23-29 in Queenstown, Maryland. The seminar provides faculty at liberal arts institutions the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues from other colleges and other disciplines while probing the ideas and values that underlie their teaching. More information about the Wye Faculty Seminar, including registration forms, can be found on AAC&U's Web site; the seminar is cosponsored by AAC&U and the Aspen Institute.

AAC&U Launches National Initiative to Engage Faculty with Assessment

AAC&U recently announced the launch of a new initiative, Engaging Faculty with the Assessment of Liberal Education Outcomes. The initiative, which is supported by The Teagle Foundation, will provide a faculty development program to a consortium of colleges and universities working to improve the assessment of key learning outcomes. For additional information, see the press release announcing the project.

Literature Review on Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility Goes Online

The review of literature written for AAC&U's Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility project is now online. In addition to conceptualizing and framing the domain of personal and social responsibility, the review identifies unanswered questions that might be explored through systematic, longitudinal study in the future. More information about Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility is available on the project's Web pages.

Liberal Education Looks Beyond Computer Literacy

The Fall issue of Liberal Education explores how computer technology broadens the range of experiences and resources available to students and enhances the role of faculty. It also features the results of the first Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, an essay on the GI Bill from the 1945 Bulletin of the Association, and reflections on the cultural climate of plagiarism.

Online Series to Focus on Technology and General Education

Beginning February 24, the TLT Group and AAC&U will present Greater Expectations for 21st-Century Learning, a series of four Webcasts focused on technology and general education. The series will address whether advances in the uses of computing and the Internet have implications for what students should learn in college and the ways in which computing opens new opportunities for improving general education.

AAC&U Staff Members Caryn McTigue Musil and Jerry Gaff Honored

Caryn McTigue Musil, AAC&U vice president for diversity, equity, and global initiatives, has received the Donna Shavlik Award from the American Council on Education. The award recognizes her distinguished record of leadership and her achievements on behalf of women in higher education.

AAC&U Senior Fellow Jerry Gaff was recognized by the Association for General and Liberal Studies, which named its faculty award in his honor. The Jerry G. Gaff Faculty Awards recognize faculty members who demonstrate outstanding leadership for general and liberal studies.

General Education and the Assessment Reform Agenda
A new Academy in Transition paper by national assessment expert Peter Ewell

Integrative Learning: Mapping the Terrain
A new Academy in Transition paper by Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings, published jointly by AAC&U and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Network for Academic Renewal Conferences:

General Education and Assessment: Creating Shared Responsibility for Learning Across the Curriculum will take place February 17-19, 2005,
in Atlanta, Georgia

Pedagogies of Engagement: Deepening Learning In and Across the Disciplines will take place April 14-16, 2005, in Bethesda, Maryland

Summer Institutes:

The Institute on General Education will be held May 20-25, 2005, in Newport, Rhode Island

The Greater Expectations Institute: Campus Leadership for Inclusion, Engagement, and Achievement will be held June 22-26, 2005, in Burlington, Vermont

For more information on meetings, visit www.aacu.org/meetings/index.cfm