Liberal Education and America's Promise

Wisconsin Advocacy and Campus Action Initiative

Wisconsin was designated the first official partner state in the LEAP campaign in March 2005. In collaboration with AAC&U, leaders in Wisconsin have piloted a series of campus action and advocacy efforts that champion the value of a liberal education for all college students. Through the advocacy and campus-action activities described below, LEAP Forward Wisconsin is advancing a strategic dialogue on the future of higher education and the importance of liberal education in the state. 

AAC&U has partnered with the University of Wisconsin System through its initiative, The Currency of the Liberal Arts and Sciences: Rethinking Liberal Education in Wisconsin. Keep an eye on this Web site as we add links to new resources and descriptions of the activities as they develop.

Activities to promote liberal education in Wisconsin

• President Burris notes in his Spring 2008 Beloit College Magazine column that the “hallmarks of a Beloit College education” were the very practices that employers endorsed in the 2008 LEAP survey. He notes their approval of “community-based projects, supervised internships, advanced senior projects, and essay tests” and their rejection of “multiple choice tests.”
• The Wisconsin system used leap year and leap day to promote LEAP on their campuses. Donna Silver, assistant director in the office of professional and instructional development in the Wisconsin system, wrote "LEAP program vital to education in the state" in The Capital Times (February 28, 2008). Scott Furlong, dean of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wrote "LEAP promotes liberal arts education" in the Green Bay Press Gazette (February 29, 2008). John Koker, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at Oshkosh, wrote "Promoting a 'liberal' education, as in 'liberating' the mind…." in The Northwestern (March 4, 2008). And George Savage, chair of the department of languages and literatures at UW-Whitewater, wrote “Time to value well-rounded universities” in the Wisconsin State Journal (February 28, 2008), stating that a liberal education is “is practical, politically essential and philosophically relevant.”
• In January 2008, the College of Arts and Sciences at UW-Eau Claire sponsored the first annual Freshman Provocation, an event intended to provoke students to seriously consider the concept of a liberal education. Four faculty members from different disciplines -- English, psychology, chemistry, and biology -- spoke about how their own liberal educations impacted their personal and professional lives and why they advocate that students should work intentionally to develop broad content knowledge and skills across disciplines.
• UW-Oshkosh Center for Scholarly Teaching is holding a Provost's Teaching and Learning Summit: Connecting Campus and Classroom Priorities. AAC&U Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Debra Humphreys gave the keynote address on liberal education reform.
• The UW System is presenting Liberal Education and Wisconsin’s Promise: The Teaching, Learning, and Assessment of Liberal Education Outcomes, a conference designed to help faculty and instructional academic staff teach to the skills, abilities, and habits of mind identified by the academy and employers as essential learning outcomes for the 21st century.
  
• The UW System Office of Professional and Instructional Development is sponsoring $2500 grants for teams of instructors to design and study class lessons that address liberal education outcomes in introductory courses. The grants are an opportunity for small teams of instructors to spend a year carefully examining their teaching and student learning related to liberal education learning outcomes in introductory courses.
  
• As part of the general education section of its Web site, the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a page about LEAP and its presence on campus in the curriculum.
• University of Wisconsin-Madison held a first-year conference based on the essential learning outcomes of the LEAP campaign, with breakout sessions focused on Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World, Intellectual and Practical Skills, Personal and Social Responsibility, and Integrative Learning.
• The Lt. Governor of Wisconsin, Barbara Lawton, gave a speech about LEAP to the UW Board of Regents.
• The UW System Liberal Arts Scholarship Competition, established to support and promote liberal arts and science education throughout the state’s public university system.  The competition is one of many activities of the UW System’s Currency of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Initiative, which seeks to make the goals and outcomes of liberal arts education accessible and valuable to all UW students, regardless of major or degree program. 
• Public opinion research—including focus groups with high school and college students regarding their own goals for college learning. See Memo on Wisconsin Focus Groups as well as earlier Findings from Focus Groups with Current College Students and Rising High School Seniors (Indiana, Oregon, Virginia). WI campuses involved in the initiative will also be conducting and analyzing the findings from student focus groups that assess their own students’ college learning goals and their awareness of important liberal education outcomes.
• The Syllabus Project, in which the outcomes of a liberal education are placed on the syllabi faculty develop for their courses as part of their learning goals for students.  Begun at UW-Oshkosh, this practice has been adopted at several other UW institutions, with more to follow.
• Campus-Community Dialogues—a series of campus-community meetings that brought together key constituents and feature the voices of business leaders and recent graduates discussing key outcomes and educational practices that lead to success in life and work. These dialogues focused on what outcomes of college are most important; how students need to be prepared to achieve these outcomes; and what avenues for change exist in the state to advance these goals. 

News and Announcements

• Press release announcing University of Wisconsin System and AAC&U partnership
• AAC&U Annual Meeting podcasts including speech by Wisconsin Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton
• Wisconsin public radio program, The West Side, on Liberal Education and UW-Eau Claire Campus-Community Dialogue (March 6, 2006)
• UW-Oshkosh LEAP activities featured in UW-Oshkosh Magazine and ACE's Solutions for Our Future Web Site.
• The chancellor of UW-Oshkosh created the Liberal Education Reform Team (Summer 2007), chaired by faculty from Business Administration, English, and the College of Letters and Science.

If you would like to be involved in the WI initiative, please contact Rebecca Karoff at 608-263-2728 or rkaroff@uwsa.edu or Debra Humphreys at Humphreys@aacu.org.