AAC&U Announces New Annual Meeting Speakers, Including Derek Bok and Sandy and Helen Astin

AAC&U’s Annual Meeting— “Intentional Learning, Unscripted Challenges:  Knowledge and Imagination for an Interdependent World”—will be held January 23-26, 2008, in Washington, DC.  At a new featured session, “Cultivating the Spirit: College and the Search for Meaning,” Alexander and Helen Astin will highlight findings from their study of college students' spiritual development. Also added to the program is Derek Bok, who will speak on Saturday morning. Registration is still open for the pre-meeting symposium, “No Longer Optional: Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility,” which will feature the work of AAC&U’s initiative, Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility and AAC&U’s partner project, Bringing Theory to Practice.  For online registration and more conference highlights, visit the annual meeting Web pages.

AAC&U Thanks Annual Meeting Sponsors

AAC&U thanks Chartwells Educational Dining Services for once again providing generous sponsorship of the welcoming reception, which will be held Wednesday, January 23. Additionally, we thank our contributing sponsors—Academic Management Systems, Blackboard, Data180, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Nuventive, and TaskStream; and our sponsorship friends—the Chronicle of Higher Education, The IDEA Center, Inside Higher Ed, Stylus Publishing, and WEAVEonline. We hope you take the opportunity to visit these sponsors’ display tables in our conference commons.

Register Now for AAC&U Spring Network Meetings on General Education Assessment and Effective Educational Practices

Online registration is now available for AAC&U’s upcoming spring Network for Academic Renewal meetings. A February 21-23, 2008, meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, titled “Integrative Designs for General Education and Assessment,” will focus on ways that faculty, academic administrators, and student affairs educators can re-energize their general education programs while also responding to calls for increased accountability. Featured speakers include Peggy Maki and Stanley Katz. AAC&U will also host “Discovering, Integrating and Applying Knowledge: Effective Educational Practices for Today’s Students and Tomorrow’s Innovation,” April 10-12 in Austin, Texas. This meeting will explore issues of student achievement and practices effective in helping all students succeed and achieve essential learning outcomes. Uri Treisman of the University of Texas-Austin will give the keynote address.

AAC&U Announces New Project on Engaging Departments

With the support of the Teagle Foundation, and as part of its ongoing work in Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP), AAC&U will engage in a yearlong planning process to develop a summer institute for campus faculty and department chairs. The purpose of the summer institute will be to support the development of leadership within and across departments for strengthening and assessing students’ liberal learning. To learn more, visit the Engaging Departments Web page, and read the press release.

New Podcasts Available from AAC&U Fall Meetings

AAC&U is pleased to offer new podcasts of selected sessions from our Network conferences “Civic Learning at the Intersections," held October 18-20, 2007, in Denver, Colorado, and "Sharing Responsibility for Essential Learning Outcomes” held November 1-3, 2007, in Savannah, Georgia. Speakers include Benjamin Barber, Lee Knefelkamp, Harry Boyte, Beverly Daniel Tatum, and Gerdenio (Sonny) Manuel. To download or subscribe to these podcasts, please visit the AAC&U podcasts page.

2008 Greater Expectations Institute Faculty Announced

AAC&U is pleased to announce the faculty for the 2008 Greater Expectations Institute, “Campus Leadership for Student Engagement, Inclusion, and Achievement,” which will be held June 18-22, 2008, in Snowbird, Utah. The institute is a five-day, intensive program designed for colleges and universities working to increase student engagement, inclusion, and achievement. This year's faculty members include: Mary J. Allen, Susan E. Borrego, Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen, Jonathan Daube, Gail G. Evans, L. Dee Fink, Tori Haring-Smith, Sylvia Hurtado, Patricia Iannuzzi, L. Lee Knefelkamp, Judith A. Ramaley, Carol Geary Schneider, and Damon A. Williams. Applications for the institute will be available online beginning in January.

LEAP Meetings in Virginia, Wisconsin Examine Liberal Learning Outcomes

On November 12, faculty and administrators from thirteen Virginia private colleges convened at Washington & Lee University to discuss the LEAP campaign.  More than sixty-five participants considered ways to help students understand the long-term value of liberal learning—and how institutions can provide enhanced curricular and programmatic offerings to help students achieve a liberal education.  Former Virginia Governor Gerald L. Baliles gave the keynote address, in which he identified liberal education as one of six key elements necessary for leadership in the twenty-first century. Funding for the meeting was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

AAC&U also cosponsored a conference titled “Liberal Education and Wisconsin's Promise: The Teaching, Learning, and Assessment of Liberal Education Outcomes,” November 8-9 at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, as part of the LEAP initiative. Other sponsors included the UW System, the Wisconsin Technical Colleges System, and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. See LEAP Wisconsin for more information about the LEAP initiative in Wisconsin. See LEAP Campus Action Network for information on how to get involved.

AAC&U Web Site Now Offers RSS Feed for Updates

An new feature of the AAC&U Web site is an RSS feed. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication,” and subscribing to the free feed allows a user to receive automatic updates on AAC&U projects, conferences, calls for participation, and new publications, using any of several free Web-based RSS readers, such as iGoogle and My Yahoo. To learn more about RSS and to get started, visit the AAC&U RSS page.

AAC&U Senior Vice President Speaks to Council of Europe

Caryn McTighe Musil, AAC&U senior vice president, gave a keynote address at a Council of Europe higher education conference on November 21, 2007. This meeting, “New Challenges to European Higher Education: Managing the Complexities of a Globalised Society,” launched a new three-year flagship project by the Council of Europe titled “The University between Humanism and the Market—Redefining its Values and Functions for the 21st Century.” Musil spoke of the enduring qualities of a liberal education, particularly the need for twenty-first century students to develop intercultural skills and global perspectives. Read more about what AAC&U has done with the Council of Europe here.

AAC&U Cosponsors Service Learning Conference

AAC&U, through its office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives, was a cosponsor of the 2007 International Research Conference on Service-learning and Community  Engagement, in Tampa, Florida, October 6-9, 2007. The conference was hosted by the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). More information about the conference can be found on its Web site.

AAC&U Welcomes New Research Associate to Office of Quality, Curriculum, and Assessment

AAC&U announces the hiring of Wende Morgaine as a research associate to work on AAC&U’s new “Rising to the Challenge” grant from the Fund for Improvement in Post-Secondary Education. Morgaine will assist in collecting and synthesizing rubrics for the essential learning outcomes of a liberal education, especially those outcomes for which there are less-developed measures on campuses. In addition, she will work with a set of campuses in utilizing e-portfolios to demonstrate and assess student learning across the broad range of essential outcomes. Morgaine has bachelor’s and masters’ degrees in film/television and rhetoric and writing from Portland State University. She has taught and worked at community colleges and universities, and been active in the Open Source educational technology movement as a developer, user, and consultant.

Liberal Education, Fall 2007
Faculty Leadership and Institutional Change

On Campus With Women, Vol. 36, No. 2
Women on the Web

2008 Annual Meeting:

Intentional Learning, Unscripted Challenges: Knowledge and Imagination for an Interdependent World
January 23–26, 2008
Washington, DC

Network for Academic Renewal Conferences:

Integrative Designs for General Education and Assessment February 21-23 2008
Boston, Massachusetts

Discovering, Integrating and Applying Knowledge: Effective Educational Practices for Today's Students and Tomorrow's Innovation
April 10-12, 2008
Austin, Texas

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