ACHIEVING GREATER EXPECTATIONS

The Network for Academic Renewal Conference
November13-15, 2003
Washington, DC

Resources from Meeting

Toward an Inclusive Vision: Liberal Education in the New Century (pdf 134K)
William Plater, Acting Chancellor, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

This thoughtful and provocative keynote address is a call for new forms of action, noting "the premise of Greater Expectations is too important to settle for incremental change and the public's interest too great to ignore."

Selected Campus Use of Greater Expectations Report
Andrea Leskes, Vice President for Education and Quality Initiatives, AAC&U

The Greater Expectations report has been widely shared, with an estimated 42,000-45,000 copies in circulation (including printed originals, copies downloaded from www.greaterexpectations.org, and duplicates made for wider distribution). To date, the report has framed several important activities, including conversations with external stakeholders; conversations on campuses and across campuses; conversations with trustees; strategic and academic planning discussions; accreditation self-studies; and action plans for change. To share how your campus or organization is using the report, please email gex@aacu.org.

Student Electronic Portfolios to Assess Liberal Learning Across the Curriculum
Sharon Hamilton, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

This site provides information about ePort, an IUPUI electronic portfolio package intended to provide students with a resource that will enable them to track their intellectual growth throughout their college career and to prepare customized resumes for future employers or graduate school committees. The portfolio also provides faculty, department chairs, and campus level administrators information about student learning that will help them make curricular, pedagogical, and resource decisions.

Reading for First-year Students: The Frankenstein Project
June Youatt, Michigan State University

This site describes the "One Book, One Community" program that is encouraging the East Lansing and Michigan State University communities to read the same book over a six-week period this fall and to come together to discuss it in a variety of settings. Although dozens of similar programs have been sponsored nationwide, this is one of the very few that bring together a city and a university.

It Takes a Village: Collaboration of Academics and Student Affairs (pdf 2.4 MB)
Don Bantz, Eddy Brown, Holly Colbert, and Phyllis Lane, The Evergreen State College

This handout describes academic practices at Evergreen State College that support first-year students’ transition into learning communities.

Greater Expectations Posters

Posters at the conference summarized key points from the Greater Expectations report.The Learning Students Need describes the characteristics of intentional learners. Organizing Educational Principles demonstrates how former educational practices can be modified to meet the needs of the New Academy. The New Academy summarizes the characteristics of a 21st Century education as put forth in the Greater Expectations report.

Quality Assurance in Statewide Transfer
Neala Schleuning, Illinois Board of Higher Education

iTransfer supports the Illinois Articulation Initiative's (IAI) mission to facilitate student transfer from one participating Illinois college/university to another in order to complete a degree. iTransfer's goal is to make planning and gathering transfer information simple. The iTransfer website highlights the IAI General Education Core Curriculum (GECC) and Major recommendations.

Using Faculty Development to Sustain a Learner-Centered Climate
Jean O’Brien, Brian Pavlac, and Jennifer McClinton-Temple, King’s College

The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at King's College serves as a catalyst to stimulate innovations in teaching and learning. The CELT promotes faculty discussion and sharing on teaching and learning, acts as a resource center to serve faculty in their efforts to become more effective teachers, and coordinates the many diverse programs related to teaching and learning that are currently and in the future will be sponsored by the college. CELT provides services such as: peer evaluation of teaching; consultation on syllabi, assignments, and assessment practices; listing of resources available on the web; disseminating information about conferences, teaching and research grants, and faculty awards (and help with writing them); planning and organization of workshops.

Achieving Greater Expectations on Campus: Launching Conversations

Several times during the conference participants were encouraged to discuss launching campus community dialogues and individuals who had hosted a dialogue shared their experiences. Included here is a summary of the 400 participant dialogue held at Southern Oregon University, where speakers and participants were able to arrive at shared conclusions such as "All professions, from the highly technical to the largely people-based fields, need men and women grounded in what a liberal education can offer."

Achieving Greater Expectations in Undergraduate Education
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

As IUPUI creates an intentional future for itself, it has kept in mind its context, understanding that it cannot succeed if it does not address the larger social and economic systems of which it is a part, including national educational reforms. At the same time, in an era of diminished resources, it has sought to connect and relate many separate initiatives and activities so as to draw cumulative value from them toward a focused set of strategic goals. And it has sought a sense of purpose and coherence in the actual learning and attainment of students, using their individual lived educational experiences as the focal point for faculty work and institutional objectives. As IUPUI struggles to keep all of the hundreds of offices and initiatives in mind, this resource guide has been developed to provide an overview and to orient participants to the larger shared goals.

If you have questions, please e-mail us at meetings@aacu.org.