| Meetings and Institutes
Conference on Personal and Social Responsibility—Reduced Rates Available through Sept. 3
Register today for AAC&U’s Network for Academic Renewal meeting, Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility: Deepening Student and Campus Commitments, October 1-3, 2009, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Early registration discounts for both the conference and hotel rooms are in effect through September 3. The conference will include a keynote speech by Anne Colby of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching titled, “Character and Competence: Realigning the Core Commitments of Higher Education,” as well as an Open Forum on the democracy movement, student engagement, and the role of higher education. The conference also features six premeeting workshops and more than sixty presentations describing best practices and campus models—half of which focus on assessing personal and social responsibility outcomes. For a complete list of confirmed speakers and details about registration, visit the meeting Web page.
Integrative Learning Conference to Focus on Strategies for Teaching Complex Problem Solving
How can students best learn to apply their knowledge and skills to new situations? Plan to attend Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities, October 22-24, 2009, in Atlanta, Georgia, to investigate how higher education can help students develop a sense of efficacy to tackle the deep and often entrenched problems facing us as individuals and both local and global communities. Early registration discounts are available through September 30. Veronica Boix Mansilla of Harvard University will present the keynote address on “Reflections on the Future of Learning,” and featured sessions will focus on shifting institutional cultures to support integrative learning; supporting learning through assessment; and sustaining progress over time. For complete program details, please visit the conference Web site.
New Speakers Confirmed for AAC&U’s 2010 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC
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, in Washington, DC. Speakers include Martha Kanter, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education and former chancellor, Foothill-De Anza Community College District; Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation for Education; Frank Donoghue, author of The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities; Stanley Ikenberry, former president of ACE; George Kuh of Indiana University-Bloomington; and Jane Wellman of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability. The Opening Forum will feature Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, who will speak about his new book, How We Decide: The New Science of Decision Making. The ACAD Luncheon keynote will be presented by Andrew M. Delbanco, professor of humanities at Columbia University, named by Time magazine as “America’s Best Social Critic.” A premeeting symposium on “The Search for VALUE: Innovation, Economic Uncertainty, and E-Portfolio Assessment” will be held January 20 with keynote speaker Randy Bass of Georgetown University. Online registration will be available September 15.
Submit Proposals for Shaping Faculty Roles Conference by September 8
The Network for Academic Renewal invites proposals for its upcoming conference, Faculty Roles in High-Impact Practices, which explore how to support and advance faculty in their use of high-impact practices that foster student achievement of essential outcomes. It seeks proposals highlighting models of these high-impact practices—including undergraduate research, service learning, first-year and capstone projects, and learning communities—and those that address issues of faculty rewards, promotion and tenure, cost-effectiveness, and more. It also invites proposals geared toward administrators and others on campus looking to support and partner with faculty to advance the use of high-impact practices for more students, more intentionally, across multiple points in time. Please include facilitators who bring diverse perspectives and life experiences to the topic or issue your proposal addresses. For complete details, see the Call for Proposals. All submissions are due September 8, 2009.
LEAP News
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Read AAC&U’s LEAP Blog, LiberalEducation.Nation, via RSS Feed |
AAC&U’s new multiauthored blog, LiberalEducation.Nation, now features an RSS feed to make following the blog easy and convenient. Sign up for the RSS feed and be automatically notified whenever a new post is added to the blog. Recent posts include George D. Kuh’s thoughts on why college ranking lists are of limited use, Debra Humphreys on why higher education is important both for our economy and our democracy, and David Tritelli on the overabundance of “literacies” in higher education.
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AAC&U President’s Op-Ed about the Value of Liberal Education Featured in Forbes Magazine |
In the special “America's Best Colleges” issue of Forbes magazine, AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider describes the twenty-first-century approach to liberal education and why it is the best preparation for life and success in a competitive global economy. The article, “In Defense of a Liberal Education,” highlights the ways a liberal education prepares students for both employment and active, engaged citizenship. Click here to read Schneider’s piece.
Project Highlights
VALUE Initiative Releases Fifteen Rubrics to Assess Key Learning Outcomes
AAC&U's VALUE Initiative (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) has developed rubrics for a wide array of learning outcomes, including many often neglected in campus and commercial assessment systems. Rubrics developed as part of AAC&U’s VALUE initiative and tested on more than one hundred pilot campuses allow the assessment of fifteen different outcomes, including, among others, critical thinking, oral communication, problem solving, civic engagement, ethical reasoning, and integrative learning. AAC&U will release a guide to using rubrics for individual student and institutional assessment in early 2010. You can download the rubrics for use on your campus at: www.aacu.org/value/rubrics. If you would like more information, please e-mail VALUE Initiative Manager Wende Morgaine at wendemm@gmail.com
Other AAC&U News
AAC&U Invites Submissions to National Gallery of Writing on Topic of Twenty-First-Century Liberal Education
AAC&U is a partner in the National Gallery of Writing, an online exhibition of writing hosted by the National Council of Teachers of English. The National Gallery will open on October 20, 2009, as part of the National Day on Writing. Within the larger exhibition, AAC&U has created a gallery of its own devoted to liberal education. The theme of the AAC&U Gallery is “the meaning of liberal education in the twenty-first century.” We invite students, faculty, and staff from our member institutions—and friends of liberal education wherever they may be—to submit work to be displayed in this innovative venue. Anyone may submit one piece of writing for review and possible acceptance. The form or mode of writing is up to the writer. The AAC&U gallery curators will review and respond to each submission. For more information and detailed submission guidelines, visit AAC&U’s gallery. To browse other galleries, visit the National Gallery of Writing homepage.
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Network Meetings
Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility: Deepening Student and Campus Commitments
October 1-3, 2009
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities
October 22-24, 2009
Atlanta, Georgia
Other Meetings
Annual Meeting
The Wit, The Will... And the Wallet:
Supporting Educational Innovation, Shaping our Global Futures
January 20-23, 2010
Washington, DC
For more
information on meetings, visit www.aacu.org/meetings/index.cfm
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