Meetings and Institutes:
AAC&U Annual Meeting to Include Special Sessions on Economic Issues
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. Discounted registration rates are still available for both online and mail registrations through December 19. A new feature of the meeting will be a set of Saturday-morning roundtable discussions on the impact of the economic crisis on higher education. For more information, visit the Annual Meeting Web page and see the conference program.
AAC&U Introduces New Summer 2009 Institute on Engaging Departments
With support from the Teagle Foundation, AAC&U will offer a new summer institute in 2009 called Engaging Departments as part of its signature initiative, Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP). The institute will be held on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia, July 8-12, 2009, and will provide teams of academic administrators, department chairs, and faculty with intensive, structured time to advance their plans to foster, assess, and improve student learning within departments and across institutions. Teams will focus on leadership for learning within and among departments and assessments for achieving and improving essential outcomes. For more information and application details, see the institute Web page.
Register Now for February Meeting on General Education and Assessment
AAC&U’s next Network for Academic Renewal meeting will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 26-28, 2009. The meeting, General Education, Assessment, and the Learning Students Need, will explore how well general education programs match up with expectations for student accomplishment. This conference will help faculty and staff to invest in designs for assessment that focus and deepen learning. It will also explore what we are learning from assessment initiatives across the country, including AAC&U’s own pioneering effort to develop national guidelines for e-portfolios. For more information and to register, visit the meeting Web page.
Submit Proposals for October 2009 Meeting on Personal and Social Responsibility
AAC&U’s Network for Academic Renewal is now accepting proposals for conference sessions at the October 1-3, 2009, meeting Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility: Deepening Student and Campus Commitments in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The program will feature promising practices that develop students’ civic engagement and social responsibility in both a local and global context, personal and academic integrity, ability to examine and understand differing (and often competing) perspectives, and ethical and moral reasoning. More information about submitting a proposal can be found online. The deadline for submissions is January 30, 2009.
Inside Higher Ed and AAC&U Present Audio Conference on Assessment
As administrations change in Washington, the pressures for accountability and assessment are not going away for higher education. On Thursday, January 15, at 2 p.m. Eastern, two Association of American Colleges and Universities vice presidents—Terry Rhodes and Debra Humphreys—will explore the changing landscape for assessment, accountability and higher levels of student achievement in an audio conference jointly sponsored by Inside Higher Ed. The audio conference is ideal for presidents, deans, department heads, education researchers, and faculty members working on issues of assessment. Learn more information and sign up online.
Project Highlights and Staff News:
AAC&U and PKAL Announce New Partnership to Improve Science Education
AAC&U and Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) are joining forces to advance and amplify work on improving undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in colleges and universities across the country. AAC&U and PKAL share a strong conviction that these fields are essential to liberal learning in the twenty-first century, and that undergraduates in today’s STEM labs and classrooms should gain both the skills and knowledge important in a wide range of contemporary careers and become responsible citizens in a complex and challenging world. To learn more about this new partnership, see the press release.
Grant from Lumina Foundation Supports Expansion of Making Excellence Inclusive
AAC&U is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education to support its work on Making Excellence Inclusive. This new funding will support the scaling up of efforts already underway as part of AAC&U’s initiative, Give Students a Compass. Give Students a Compass supports colleges in three public systems—California State University, Oregon University system, and the University of Wisconsin system—as they work to reform general education and ensure all students’ achievement of a set of essential learning outcomes. With the expanded support from Lumina, participating colleges and universities will build their capacity to support underserved students’ level of academic success by broadening their participation in a set of high-impact educational practices. See the press release for more information.
Interview with AAC&U President Published in Change Magazine
Read a new interview with AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider published by Change Magazine. Conducted by Contributing Editor Deborah DeZure, the interview covers such issues as trends in liberal education, K-12 education and improving students’ readiness for college learning, and the role of associations in advancing change in higher education. Read the interview online.
VALUE Initiative Seeks Campuses to Test Draft Rubrics
AAC&U's VALUE Initiative (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) has developed rubrics for most of the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes. We are seeking campuses or departments who are interested in testing the following rubrics on student work before February 1, 2009:
- Inquiry and analysis
- Oral communication
- Quantitative literacy
- Teamwork
- Ethical reasoning
- Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
- Written communication
- Intercultural knowledge and competence
- Critical thinking
- Information literacy
- Creative thinking
If you would like to have your faculty give us feedback on one of these rubrics, please e-mail VALUE Initiative Manager Wende Morgaine at wendemm@gmail.com.
AAC&U Senior Director Susan Albertine Recognized at CCAS Meeting
At the Council of Colleges of Arts & Sciences (CCAS) 2008 annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, November 12-15, AAC&U Senior Director for LEAP in the States Susan Albertine was recognized for her leadership and service. As the president-elect of CCAS, Albertine chaired this year’s annual meeting organizing committee and was in line to serve as president of CCAS. Following her appointment as a senior leader of AAC&U’s LEAP initiative, Albertine stepped aside from the line of succession. In Oregon, Albertine and AAC&U President Carol Schneider both addressed the conference, noting “the shared commitment to liberal education that is the common ground of both organizations and the guiding vision of their work.” As an organization, CCAS has endorsed LEAP and has also joined AAC&U in support of the Educated Citizen and Public Health initiative. AAC&U is grateful for the collaboration and looks forward to continuing friendship between the organizations. See Give Students a Compass for more information about the initiative Albertine currently coordinates.
LEAP News:
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University of Wisconsin System LEAP Conference Discusses Liberal Education in the Twenty-first Century |
Teams from fourteen University of Wisconsin System institutions met in Madison, Wisconsin, on November 20-21, 2008, to discuss how best to educate students for twenty-first-century challenges. AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider was among the keynote speakers. The “Liberal Education: A Unifying Mission for the 21st Century University” conference featured best practices from across the UW System, as well as sessions that reflected a range of curricular and cocurricular initiatives that seek to ensure that students will learn the knowledge, skills, values, and habits of mind needed for effective citizenship in a rapidly changing and globally interdependent world. See the conference news release for more event details and the LEAP Wisconsin Web page for other details about LEAP in Wisconsin.
New Online and Print Resources:
Resources now available from October 2008 Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence Conference
Nearly five hundred educators gathered in Long Beach, California, on October 16-18, 2008, for AAC&U's biennial conference on diversity, learning, and inclusive excellence. The conference highlighted 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. Resources from the conference—including PowerPoint slides, handouts, and recordings of keynote speeches and plenary sessions—are now available online.
ACAD Resource Handbook for Academic Deans Second Edition Available
The American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD) announces the availability of the second edition of their best-selling publication, The Resource Handbook for Academic Deans. Written “by deans and for deans,” this is an excellent resource for academic administrators of any level. More information and order forms can be found at the ACAD Web site.
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Network for Academic
Renewal Conferences:
General Education, Assessment, and the Learning Students Need,
February 26-28, 2009
Baltimore, Maryland
Shaping Faculty Roles in a Time of Change: Leadership for Student Learning,
April 2-4, 2009
San Diego, California
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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