| Meetings and Institutes:
Register Now for Fall Network Meeting on Personal and Social Responsibility
Online and by-mail registration is now available for a fall Network for Academic Renewal conference: Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility: Deepening Student and Campus Commitments, October 1-3, 2009, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The conference will focus on how to advance students’ ethical, civic, and moral development as a central part of their undergraduate educational experience. For an overview of all of AAC&U’s upcoming meetings and conferences, visit the Meetings Web page.
Proposals Sought for Spring 2010 General Education and Assessment Conference
AAC&U's Network for Academic Renewal invites proposals for its upcoming meeting, General Education and Assessment: Maintaining Momentum, Achieving New Priorities, to be held in February 18-20, 2010, in Seattle, Washington. Proposals should highlight fresh thinking and new approaches to help faculty, staff, and administrators maintain momentum in general education reform and assessment of learning outcomes. For detailed information about conference themes and session formats, see the Call for Proposals online. Submissions are due May 15, 2009.
LEAP News
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New LEAP Workshops Offered to LEAP Campus Action Network Members |
AAC&U has launched a series of workshops for anyone attending a Network for Academic Renewal (NAR) conference from a LEAP Campus Action Network school. These workshops build on existing LEAP resources and campus examples and help campus practitioners advance their own campus efforts in support of liberal education. Past workshops have highlighted work on general education (re)design, gaining support for LEAP efforts, and creating/sustaining faculty support structures to enhance LEAP-related work. Visit the LEAP Campus Action Network online for more information about joining the network.
Project Highlights
LEAP Compass Project Leaders Join Wisconsin Meetings
As part of the LEAP Give Students a Compass project, Susan Albertine, AAC&U senior director for LEAP states initiatives, and Alma Clayton-Pedersen, AAC&U vice president for education and institutional renewal, met with Compass leaders at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh on April 16. On April 17, Albertine gave a keynote presentation on LEAP and general education to a gathering of eighty faculty members from the Northeast Wisconsin Educational Resource Alliance (NEW ERA). NEW ERA is a voluntary consortium of thirteen public institutions of higher education in the region, serving 1.2 million people. Faculty from the College of the Menominee Nation; the Lakeshore, Fox Valley, Moraine Park, and Northeast Wisconsin Technical Colleges; and the University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac, Fox Valley, Green Bay, Marinette, Oshkosh, Sheboygan, and Extension attended.
New Directions for Global Learning Emerge from Philadelphia March Forum
AAC&U’s Shared Futures initiative held an invitational Global Learning Forum in Philadelphia, March 19-21. The meeting was designed to disseminate the work of the FIPSE-funded project, General Education and Global Learning, and to set the agenda for a growing national movement. A community of nearly three hundred faculty and administrators representing seventy-seven institutions participated in a collective mapping of the multifaceted terrain of global learning in the curriculum and cocurriculum. Discussion sessions were drawn from areas of interest identified by participants, and team members had the opportunity to work in learning communities around specific examples of interdisciplinary global questions. Stephanie Pfirman, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College, presented a keynote address on integrative learning and the importanceof providing students with both the means and the will to address global problems. For Pfirman’s presentation and other resources from the forum, including institutional profiles describing participants' work on global learning, please see the participant resources.
Bringing Theory to Practice Project Expands Leadership Coalition, Hosts Presidents’ Seminar
Fifteen university and college presidents have joined the Bringing Theory to Practice national Leadership Coalition, joining forty existing members who have committed to developing campus cultures that focus on actively engaging students in learning, evaluating their success in doing so, and addressing the full dimensions of student intellectual, emotional, and civic flourishing. The BTtoP Leadership Coalition was created in fall 2008 with support from the S. Engelhard Center, the Charles Engelhard Foundation, the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, and the Lumina Foundation. To see the list of new and existing Leadership Coalition schools, see the press release.
VALUE Initiative Seeks Campuses to Test Rubrics and Volunteers for Rubric Development Teams
AAC&U's VALUE initiative (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) has developed rubrics for most of the “Essential Learning Outcomes” highlighted in AAC&U’s LEAP initiative. We are seeking campuses or departments who are interested in testing rubrics on samples of their own students’ work between May 1 and June 15, 2009. We are also seeking volunteers to join our existing rubric development teams from June 15 and July 15 to help with the final revision of rubrics on a wide array of learning outcomes. For a full list of the outcomes, see the VALUE metarubric page. For more information about volunteering for VALUE rubric development, please e-mail VALUE Initiative Manager Wende Morgaine at wendemm@gmail.com.
AAC&U and PKAL Invite Nominations and Applications for New PKAL Director
AAC&U, in collaboration with the staff and board of Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL), has begun a search for a new PKAL Director. See the position announcement for details. With this new leadership, PKAL will formally move to AAC&U with which it is now a partner. The search and the PKAL/AAC&U alliance build on a year of active collaborative planning by both organizations’ boards of directors and senior staff. The partnership is supported by a successful fundraising effort led by Daniel Sullivan, member of both AAC&U’s and PKAL’s boards of directors and president of St. Lawrence University. PKAL’s founding and current director, Jeanne L. Narum, has announced her intention to retire as PKAL director by the end of 2009, when she will become an AAC&U senior fellow and PKAL director emerita, advising in the evolution and expansion of PKAL and contributing to the literature on transforming undergraduate STEM learning. See November 2008 press release for more information about the PKAL/AAC&U partnership.
Other AAC&U News
Survey Reveals Widespread Support for Broad Learning Outcomes for All Students and Variety of Assessment Approaches to Measure Progress
AAC&U recently completed a national survey of its members revealing trends in undergraduate education and documenting the widespread use of a variety of approaches to assessing learning outcomes. Nearly 80 percent of colleges now have a broad set of learning outcomes for all students and more than 70 percent now assess outcomes across the curriculum beyond the use of course grades. In addition, academic leaders surveyed revealed an increasing adoption of high-impact teaching and assessment practices—57 percent report using electronic portfolios for at least some students and nearly all those surveyed now offer capstone projects for at least some students. The survey was completed by chief academic officers at 433 colleges and universities of all sorts (public and private, two-year and four-year, large and small). See the first of two reports on the findings—Learning and Assessment: Trends in Undergraduate Education and a press release summarizing the findings. The second report on the survey findings, Trends and Emerging Practices in General Education, will be released later in May.
New Comprehensive Study Abroad Guide Available
Copublished by AAC&U and Routledge, The Handbook of Practice and Research in Study Abroad: Higher Education and the Quest for Global Citizenship is a comprehensive survey of the study abroad and global learning fields. This reference volume describes approaches to study abroad alongside a critical assessment of the most up-to-date research, theory and practice. The volume brings together the insights of expert academics, senior administrators, practitioners of study abroad, and policy makers from across the United States, Canada, and other parts of the world. The book includes a chapter on globalizing the curriculum coauthored by Kevin Hovland and Caryn McTighe Musil of AAC&U. The book will be available in May 2009, and preordering is available online.
AAC&U Staff Member Poem Featured in Choral Piece at Philadelphia Equality Forum 2009
A poem by AAC&U Senior Director for LEAP State Initiatives Susan Albertine was featured as part of a “Voices of Equality” choral concert at the Equality Forum 2009, held April 27-May 3, 2009, in Philadelphia. Albertine’s poem, “Voyage” was paired with music composed by Temple University professor Cynthia Folio and performed by a three-hundred-voice chorus made up of members from three distinctive musical groups—the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus, the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir, and the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia. “Voyage” explores selfhood and cultural identities in the United States.
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Institute on General Education
May 29-June 3, 2009
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Greater Expectations Institute
June 17-21, 2009
Burlington, Vermont
Engaging Departments Institute
July 8-12, 2009
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Network Meetings
Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility: Deepening Student and Campus Commitments
October 1-3, 2009
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Integrative Learning
October 22-24, 2009
Atlanta, Georgia
For more
information on meetings, visit www.aacu.org/meetings/index.cfm
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