AAC&U officers and staff regularly travel throughout the country, and occasionally the world, to speak and consult at AAC&U member schools through seminars, institutes, and workshops as well as in more informal gatherings. AAC&U staff also regularly speak on the value of liberal education at various media and public affairs events. These meetings are an opportunity for the membership to influence the direction of AAC&U's initiatives. We look forward to seeing you the next time we are on your campus.

Carol Geary Schneider, AAC&U president, will participate in a panel discussion titled “Making the Case for the Humanities” at the National Humanities Alliance 2009 Conference March 11. With Anthony Carnevale, the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, and Robert Weisbuch, president of Drew University, Schneider will examine how knowledge of the humanities influences workforce competitiveness, citizenship, the public humanities, and building a global academy. On March 12 and 13, Schneider will participate in a national conference on  “Liberal Education and Effective Practice.” Cosponsored by Clark University, the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise, and AAC&U, and part of AAC&U’s ongoing series of public forums sponsored by the Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative, the conference will focus on the question of how undergraduate programs in the arts and sciences can be enhanced to empower students to be not only well-informed thinkers but also effective doers.

Debra Humphreys, AAC&U vice president for communications and public affairs, presented February 5-7, 2009, on AAC&U’s LEAP initiative at a board retreat, for Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. She also did two presentations on LEAP—one for faculty and one for students—at Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, on February 12. On February 27, she presented at the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Schools on the topic, “A K-16 Global Education: Coordinating Secondary and College Approaches.” She will present at the NEA-Higher Education meeting in Miami on March 6 on a panel on the future of accountability, and will do several presentations in Utah.  She will present on LEAP and high-impact educational practices at Utah Valley University March 16, and on the status of women in higher education at Weber State University March 18 and 19.

Caryn McTighe Musil, AAC&U senior vice president, presented the keynote address, “The Academy’s GPS: Global Positioning for Student Learning”, at the Indiana University International Learning Workshop at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis on March 5, 2009. The symposium invited teams of faculty and staff from all eight Indiana University campuses to attend and learn about recent trends in international learning, explore ways to internationalize individual courses and whole curricula, and to develop campus, school, and departmental action plans. Musil’s keynote addressed these issues by highlighting research that suggests the pathways for students to global learning were still under construction and poorly marked, but she described innovative curricular and cocurricular designs that are evidence that progress is being made.