Contact: Jennifer O'Brien, Project Coordinator
202-884-0815
Obrien@aacu.org

15 Institutions Selected to Join Leadership Coalition and Receive Grants to Support Their Work in Creating and Sustaining Transformative Campus Change and Cultures for Learning

Fifteen university and college presidents have joined the BTtoP national Leadership Coalition, committing their campuses to becoming models for what liberal education can offer—and most effectively deliver.

In fall 2008, with the generous support of the S. Engelhard Center, the Charles Engelhard Foundation, the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, and the Lumina Foundation, the Bringing Theory to Practice Project, an independent project in partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities, selected the initial 40 presidents from interested institutions of all types offering baccalaureate degrees.

The objective in forming the Coalition has been to encourage and support those institutions which are committed to providing successful models of how a campus culture focused on actively engaging students in learning, and evaluating their success in doing so, can address the full dimensions of the intellectual, emotional, and civic flourishing of students.

The BTtoP Project has now selected 15 presidents to join this original round of institutions; they will meet in New York City on April 27, 2009.  The 15 presidents (leading diverse types and locations of institutions) attending the Seminar will join in the work of those 40 institutions already committed to the Leadership Coalition.  In addition to receiving grant support, the participating institutions agree to:

• Hold relevant internal conversations regarding the institution’s commitment to a call for a “campus culture for learning,” what that will mean for their campus, and what strategies they may employ.
• Establish a leadership/planning team that would initiate plans to fit their own institutional culture.  The plans they develop will be presented at a national workshop session in the fall of 2009.
• Put into practice their plans beginning in the academic year 2009-2010.  A retrieval and dissemination conference will occur in 2010. The campus projects will constitute the examples that will become the central features of a nationally distributed publication, promulgating the institutions as models of successful, effective and affordable “Strategies for Change in Creating and Sustaining Campus Cultures for Learning.”

The BTtoP Project and its funders extend their congratulations and profound respect for the institutional achievements already gained by those colleges and universities joining the Leadership Coalition, and recognize the presidents of those institutions as national educational leaders.

The institutions listed below have been selected to join the Leadership Coalition and to receive support for their work in creating campus cultures that support learning and a commitment to the full intellectual, emotional, and civic development of their students.

• Bowling Green State University
• Gettysburg College
• Ithaca College
• Morehouse College
• Muhlenberg College
• Pace University
• Roosevelt University
• Saint Mary's College of Maryland
• Southern Arkansas University
• State University of New York, College at Cortland
• The College of Wooster
• The New School for Liberal Arts, Eugene Lang College
• Tufts University
• Vancouver Island University
• Widener University

The 40 institutions earlier announced as part of the Leadership Coalition include: