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Register Now for Fall Conferences on “Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence” and “Engaging Science”
It’s time to register for fall Network for Academic Renewal Meetings. Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence: Accelerating and Assessing Progress will be held October 16-18, 2008, in Long Beach, California, and will highlight curricular, cocurricular, and institutional models that enable higher education leaders to develop, implement, assess, and continually learn from the experience of fostering diverse learning environments. Engaging Science, Advancing Learning: General Education, Majors, and the New Global Century is planned for November 6-8, 2008, in Providence, Rhode Island. This meeting will explore the place and practice of science in college learning for the twenty-first century, and participants will work on ways to accelerate hands-on learning in science, especially with reforms that put critical inquiry, undergraduate research, and social responsibility at the center of the educational experience. Registration for each of these conferences is available online.
2009 Annual Meeting to be Held in Seattle, Washington
AAC&U’s 2009 Annual Meeting, Ready or Not: Global Challenges, College Learning, and America’s Promise, will be held in Seattle, Washington, January 21-24, 2009. Featured speakers will include Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, and Peter Sacks, author of Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education. Mimi Gardner Gates, director of the Seattle Art Museum, will speak at the ACAD (American Conference of Academic Deans) luncheon. A premeeting symposium titled “Sustainability: Place, Responsibilities, and the Curriculum,” is scheduled for January 21. Visit the Annual Meeting Web page for hotel and registration information. Online registration will be available starting in September.
Nominations Sought for K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards
AAC&U is now accepting nominations for the 2009 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards. This award recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education; who demonstrate a commitment to developing academic and civic responsibility in themselves and others; and whose work reflects a strong emphasis on teaching and learning. The deadline for nominations is October 6, 2008.
Campus Teams Explore Best Practices in Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility
One hundred seventy people attended the second AAC&U Core Commitments summer institute, held on the campus of Portland State University, July 22-25. Participant teams came from twenty-three Leadership Consortium institutions across the country to share ideas, discuss best practices, and develop campus action plans to educate students for personal and social responsibility. Participants learned how to use data gathered in fall 2007 from the Personal and Social Responsibility Institutional Inventory, and institute workshops focused on moral development, perspective-taking, and the role the arts can play in students’ personal development. Learn more about Core Commitments at its Web page.
Public Health Institute Focuses on Curriculum and Faculty Development
More than 120 faculty members and administrators from forty-three colleges and universities gathered in Crystal City, Virginia, July 14-15, 2008, to attend a Public Health Undergraduate Curriculum Development Institute. The institute, part of The Educated Citizen and Public Health, was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and grew out of a partnership between AAC&U and The Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR). Participating institutions were competitively selected based on their desire to use undergraduate public health education to advance the essential learning outcomes of a twenty-first century liberal education. Sessions were designed to help teams create curricular models that link public health, liberal learning, and education for civic/social responsibility; share experiences and challenges with colleagues working toward similar goals; and build collaborative capacity among public health educators and practitioners and faculty members teaching in the arts and sciences.
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Grant to Support LEAP Initiative on General Education Outcomes Across State Systems |
In June, AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative received funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York for Give Students a Compass, a new project that will work with public higher education systems in California, Oregon, and Wisconsin to support collaboration in remapping educational aims, practices, and assessment strategies for general education. The initiative will be directed by Susan Albertine, who is the new senior director for LEAP State Initiatives in AAC&U's Office of Quality, Curriculum, and Assessment. The initiative will also conduct a study that explores educational practices that help underserved students achieve essential learning outcomes. Read the full press release about the Carnegie grant.
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Cal State Adopts New General Education Learning Outcomes Based on LEAP Guidelines |
On July 1, the California State University system announced that it has established new guidelines for general education requirements developed by the CSU Academic Senate and based on the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes. This action responds to the very first recommendation made by the LEAP National Leadership Council (NLC) in its 2007 report, College Learning for the New Global Century (pdf). In that report, the LEAP NLC recommended that a “commitment be made to foster the aims and outcomes of a twenty-first century liberal education for all college students.” See the CSU press release, the new general education guidelines, and how you can get involved with LEAP.
AAC&U President To Conduct Inside Higher Ed Teleconference in September
AAC&U President Carol Schneider will conduct a teleconference sponsored by Inside Higher Ed on September 11, 2008, on the topic of "Liberal Education for Everyone—Transforming Professional and Liberal Arts Programs." Featuring research and insights from AAC&U’s LEAP initiative, the teleconference will examine the increasing importance of liberal education outcomes and how both professional studies and liberal arts and sciences departments are essential to fulfilling the promise of higher education for today’s students. See Inside Higher Ed Teleconferences for more information.
Assessment Program Design Workshop Held in Virginia
On July 10-12 in Alexandria, Virginia, AAC&U held an Institute Design Charrette—an invitational pilot presentation and development session for a new AAC&U summer institute for assessing student learning through undergraduate majors. Forty-three participants, including AAC&U program staff and invited guests from twenty different campuses, accreditors, and disciplinary societies, gave input into potential topics and structure for a summer institute to support departmental work on student learning and assessment. This institute was supported by the Teagle Foundation as part of AAC&U’s initiative, Engaging Departments with Advancing and Assessing Essential Outcomes. For more information on AAC&U’s work on assessment, visit our assessment resource Web page.
Why Do I Have to Take This Course? Student Advising Guide Available
Why Do I Have to Take This Course? is a practical guide written for undergraduate students. Intended to take some of the mystery out of curricular requirements, it explains the benefits of the broad learning outcomes developed during the undergraduate years. An AAC&U “best seller,” it is being used on hundreds of campuses by students and advisors looking for an answer to “Why do I have to take this course?” Read an excerpt, and order Why Do I Have to Take This Course? online.
VALUE Initiative Seeks Volunteers for Problem-Solving Rubric Development Team
AAC&U's VALUE Initiative (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) is developing rubrics for most of the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes. We need volunteers willing to work on our problem-solving rubric development team! For more information about volunteering for VALUE rubric development, please e-mail VALUE Initiative Manager, Wende Morgaine at morgaine@aacu.org.
New Report Recommends Tenure Policy Reforms for the Engaged University
A new report from Imagining America, Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University, proposes “concrete ways to remove obstacles to academic work carried out for and/or with the public by giving such work full standing as scholarship, research, or artistic creation.” Emerging from the work of the Tenure Team Initiative, among whose nineteen members are AAC&U President Carol Schneider and AAC&U Senior Scholar R. Eugene Rice, the report is a toolkit for those eager to change the culture surrounding promotion and tenure in the “new academy.” See more information about Imagining America and AAC&U faculty resources.
Fall 2008 Symposium Planned with Council of Europe
AAC&U partners with the Council of Europe to define ways colleges and universities can more effectively foster student learning about democratic cultures and human rights, while also enhancing students’ capacities and commitments to be actively engaged in multicultural and divided societies. Now in its eighth year, this transatlantic partnership cooperates through joint research projects, symposia, publications, and activities to promote the critical role of higher education in educating for democracy, social responsibility, and human rights. An October 2008 symposium in Strasbourg, France, will feature Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University and member of the National Leadership Council of AAC&U’s LEAP initiative, as the keynote speaker. For more information, see AAC&U’s Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement or the Council of Europe Web site.
Former AAC&U Staff Member Named President of Institute for Higher Education Policy
The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) Board of Directors recently named Michelle Asha Cooper as the nonpartisan global research and policy center’s new president, effective September 8, 2008. Cooper was selected after a six-month nationwide search following the departure of the organization’s founder and former president last December. Cooper is an emerging and respected leader in the postsecondary community with extensive knowledge of higher education policy, with special focus on issues of finance, diversity, and college access and success for underserved populations. Before joining the Advisory Committee, Cooper held various leadership positions at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Council for Independent Colleges, and King's College. She is the 2002 recipient of the National Education Association's Excellence in the Academy New Scholar Award.
AAC&U Welcomes New Senior Web Editor Barbara McCuen
AAC&U announces the appointment of Barbara McCuen as its new senior web editor. McCuen comes to AAC&U with a wealth of experience including, most recently, a position at the Council on Foundations. Prior to that, McCuen worked at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. She brings to AAC&U her serious commitment to liberal education and a wide array of communications and technical skills that will help us take our Web site to new levels of sophistication. Do you have suggestions for how we can improve our Web site? We would like to hear from you; e-mail Barbara at McCuen@aacu.org.
New Resources Available on AGLS Web Site
The Association for General and Liberal Studies has created a new resources page on its Web site to share policy papers, invited papers, and conference presentations and to encourage conversation about critical ideas, processes, and structures affecting general and liberal education. Visitors may download and read each paper in its entirety at the AGLS Web site.
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Network for Academic Renewal Conferences:
Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence: Accelerating and Assessing Progress
Long Beach, California
October 16-18, 2008
Engaging Science, Advancing Learning: General Education, Majors, and the New Global Century
Providence, Rhode Island
November 6-8, 2008
Annual Meeting 2009
Ready or Not: Global Challenges, College Learning, and America’s Promise
January 21-24, 2009
Seattle, Washington
For more information on meetings, visit www.aacu.org/meetings/
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