Meetings and Institutes

Educating for Social and Personal Responsibility Conference—Early Registration Ends September 3

Register now to receive early-registration discounts to attend Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility: Deepening Student and Campus Commitments. This Network for Academic Renewal conference (October 1-3, 2009, in Minneapolis, Minnesota) will explore how to move education for personal and social responsibility to the center of institutional culture and academic practice. 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. A report on the latest research from AAC&U’s Core Commitments initiative will also be featured. More information, including a conference program (pdf) and online registration form, is available at the meeting Web page.

Register Now for Integrative Learning Conference in Atlanta

What types of activities allow students to apply their learning to new situations in order to practice the skills and abilities necessary for today’s world? This question and others like it will be explored at AAC&U’s Network for Academic Renewal conference, Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities, on October 22-24 in Atlanta, Georgia. This conference will highlight the new importance of integrative learning ten years in to the new century. Online registration is now available, with discounts available through September 30. Learn more about the conference, including the preliminary schedule, online.

AAC&U’s 2010 Annual Meeting to Feature Practical Advice for Tough Economic Times

AAC&U’s Annual Meeting—The Wit, the Will…and the Wallet: Supporting Educational Innovation, Shaping our Global Futures— will be held January 20-23, 2010, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC. The Annual Meeting will continue to provide sessions that identify the skills and knowledge that are needed for success within a volatile and globally connected economy. This year’s meeting will also provide replicable models and practical advice that will help institutions thrive in a time of economic crisis. The Pre-meeting Symposium, “The Search for VALUE: Innovation, Economic Uncertainty, and E-Portfolio Assessment,” is scheduled for Wednesday, January 20. Visit the Annual Meeting Web page for hotel and registration information. Online registration will be available September 14.

Submit Proposals for Shaping Faculty Roles Conference

The Network for Academic Renewal invites proposals for its Faculty Roles in High-Impact Practices conference, scheduled for March 25-27, 2010, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The deadline for proposal submissions is September 8, 2009. AAC&U is seeking proposals that explore how to support and develop faculty in their use of high-impact practices that foster student achievement of essential outcomes. These “high-impact” practices—including undergraduate research, service learning, first-year and capstone projects/programs, and learning communities—when done well, engage students by helping them to make their own discoveries and connections, grapple with “big” questions whose importance they can see, and address complex problems. The complete Call for Proposals is online.

LEAP News

AAC&U Launches New Blog on Liberal Education

As part of its signature initiative, Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP), AAC&U has launched a new multiauthored blog that features postings and perspectives on liberal education—how it is changing, why it is so important in today's world, and what people are saying about it around the country and the world. With weekly commentary by Blog Contributing Editor Debra Humphreys, along with guest bloggers representing a variety of perspectives, the forum will introduce readers to issues in the news important to all those who care about liberal education and its future. Visit the blog, sign up to receive postings via RSS, and add your perspectives to the expanding national dialogue on the future of higher education.

AAC&U Web Site Highlights Work of Campus Action Network Members

AAC&U’s Campus Action Network brings together campuses and organizations that are committed to liberal education, helps them to improve their efforts to ensure all students achieve essential liberal education outcomes, and shines a spotlight on campus practices that work. The LEAP CAN Web pages now feature examples highlighting how CAN member institutions are embodying the LEAP Principles of Excellence (pdf). Vsit the Web page and learn how diverse institutions of all sizes and types are making excellence inclusive, giving students a compass, engaging the big questions, and fostering civic learning, among other principles. For information about becoming a CAN member, see the “How to Get Involved” Web page.

Project Highlights

AAC&U Receives Grant from Templeton Foundation to Continue National Work on Personal and Social Responsibility

AAC&U announces a new grant for its national initiative, Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility. A research-intensive grant from the John Templeton Foundation will focus on issues of moral and ethical reasoning and action. Activities will include creating a moral and ethical development module for use with the Personal and Social Responsibility Inventory, a campus climate survey developed in the first phase of the project. In addition, AAC&U will convene directors of major national higher education studies to discern what it is we know—across the research landscape—about these important outcomes of college. AAC&U will also release three reports that analyze data from the 2007 administration of the PSRI on twenty-three college campuses. These reports will address issues of civic engagement; ethics, integrity, and moral reasoning; and perspective-taking. For more information about Core Commitments and the new grant, see the press release.

Bringing Theory to Practice Project to Offer Symposium on Civic Engagement, Public Work, and Psychosocial Well-Being

The Bringing Theory to Practice Project will host a national symposium to assess the effects and affects of civic engagement and public work on the psychosocial well-being of college students November 5-6, 2009, at the Dupont Hotel in Washington, DC. Participants will exchange information and ideas from their expertise and experiences; build a national learning community among researchers, educators, and institutional leaders; and contribute to a field of practice and subject of study. Up to twenty travel grants (one per institution) of up to $500 each are available. Travel grants are conditional upon an e-mail application to Jennifer O’Brien at obrien@aacu.org. Preference will be given to participants traveling the longest distances. More information about the symposium can be found online.

Other AAC&U News

Nominations Accepted Until October 5 for K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards

The K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Awards recognize 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. All doctoral-level graduate students who are planning a career in higher education are eligible, regardless of academic department. Nominees must hold student status in January 2010. Winners will attend and present at AAC&U’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC in January, 2010. See the Cross Award Web page for more information, FAQs, and a list of previous winners.  

AAC&U Urges Support for DREAM Act and Maintenance of Funding for Minority-serving Institutions

AAC&U recently signed on to two letters coordinated and sent by the American Council on Education to members of the U.S. Congress. In letters sent June 19 to members of various House and Senate Committees, AAC&U and thirty-nine other organizations urged Congress to “ensure that vitally needed funding to strengthen America’s Minority Serving Institutions does not sunset at the end of Fiscal Year 2009.” In a separate July 1 letter to members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, AAC&U and twenty-nine other organizations urged support of the DREAM Act that removes barriers to higher education to young students, “many of whom are in this country through decisions beyond their control, but have shown themselves to be exceptional members of our communities and exhibit exemplary academic achievement.”

National Council for Research on Women Presents 2009 Award to New AAC&U Report on Women’s Progress in Higher Education

AAC&U has been awarded the National Council for Research on Women’s (NCRW) Research and Scholarship Award for its recent report, A Measure of Equity: Women’s Progress in Higher Education. Senior Vice President and Director of AAC&U’s Program on the Status and Education of Women Caryn McTighe Musil accepted the award at the NCRW annual conference in New York on June 10. The award recognized AAC&U for “outstanding research and production of knowledge built on theoretical perspectives that advance understanding of the experiences of women and/or girls in society.” A Measure of Equity was written by Judy Touchton, with Caryn McTighe Musil and Kathryn Peltier Campbell.  See the press release to learn more.

Revised Edition of Resource Handbook for Academic Deans Now Available

The American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD) announces The Resource Handbook for Academic Deans is now available for online purchase. This revised edition (2008, 2nd Edition) is written “by deans, for deans” and is an excellent resource on any bookshelf. Chapters include information on becoming a dean, handling personnel issues, and managing budgets and finance—a wide array of information on issues affecting academic administrators in the field, whether they are new to “deaning” or have been at it for a while. Please visit the “new and improved” ACAD Web site at www.acad-edu.org for easy online ordering.