Annual Meeting 2007
THE REAL TEST:
Liberal Education and Democracy’s Big Questions
Plenary and Featured Sessions
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Marvalene Hughes |
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Opening Plenary
Thursday, January 18, 8:45-10:15 a.m.
Fulfilling the Promise of a Just Democracy: New Orleans after Katrina
Marvalene Hughes became president of Dillard University only two months before the devastation of Hurricane Katrina took place. Faced with a campus covered in flood waters reaching eight to ten feet in depth and buildings destroyed by fire following the hurricane, Hughes – and other administrators at higher education institutions in New Orleans – worked tirelessly to open their doors to students again. Dillard managed to re-open in January 2006 (in a New Orleans hotel); and, on July 1, more than 350 Dillard University seniors marched down the Rosa Freeman Keller Avenue of the Oaks to receive their degrees, continuing a proud and cherished tradition. After expenditures exceeding $100 million dollars, Dillard University opened its doors in September 2006. For 11 years prior to her appointment at Dillard, Marvalene Hughes served as the president of California State University, Stanislaus. She has also served as Vice President/Vice Provost at the University of Minnesota, and has held teaching and administrative positions at the University of Toledo, Arizona State University, San Diego State University, and Eckerd College in Florida.
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Walter Isaacson |
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Closing Plenary
Saturday, January 20, 10:45-11:30 a.m.
How Benjamin Franklin Learned About Democracy's Values
Walter Isaacson, born and raised in New Orleans, is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. He has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and Managing Editor of Time magazine. He is author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and of Kissinger: A Biography (1992) and is the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). He is currently writing a biography of Albert Einstein due to be published in April 2007. Walter Isaacson is a graduate of Harvard College and of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He began his career at the Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item. He joined Time magazine in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's 14th managing editor in 1996. He became Chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003. After Hurricane Katrina, Walter Isaacson was appointed as Vice-Chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
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Scott Cowen |
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ACAD Keynote Luncheon
Friday, January 19, 11:45-1:15 p.m.
Tulane University: From Recovery to Renewal
Scott S. Cowen is Tulane University’s 14th President. He also holds joint appointments as the Seymour S. Goodman Memorial Professor of Business in Tulane's A.B. Freeman School of Business and Professor of Economics in its School of Liberal Arts. In August of 2005, Hurricane flooded two-thirds of Tulane’s campus. Despite incurring more than $400 million in damage, Tulane was repaired and 87% of its students returned for classes in January of 2006. In order to ensure the university’s financial stability and secure its continuation as one of the nation’s leading universities, President Cowen implemented a Renewal Plan representing the most sweeping reorganization of an American university in more than a century. Tulane University is also the largest employer in New Orleans. It took the lead in re-opening the city’s first post-Katrina public school and has helped other New Orleans higher education institutions recover. Prior to coming to Tulane in 1998, Scott Cowen was a member of the faculty at Case Western Reserve University for 23 years Dean and Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Management.
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Paula Rothenberg |
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Networking Breakfast for Women Faculty and Administrators
Thursday, January 18, 7:00-8:30 a.m.
And Justice for All: Using the Power of Education to Transform Our World
From 1989 to 2006, Paula Rothenberg, faculty member at The William Paterson University of New Jersey, served as the Director of The New Jersey Project on Inclusive Scholarship, Curriculum, and Teaching. She is author of Invisible Privilege: A Memoir about Race, Class, and Gender and Beyond Borders: Thinking Critically about Global Issues.
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Mildred Garcia |
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Networking Breakfast for Faculty and Administrators of Color
Friday, January 19, 7:00-8:30 a.m.
Democracy, Diversity, and the Road of the President
Mildred Garcia is president of Berkeley College and author of Succeeding in an Academic Career: A Guide for Faculty of Color (2000) and Affirmative Action's Testament of Hope: Strategies for a New Era in Higher Education (1997).
LEAP Plenary
Thursday, January 19, 4:15-5:45 p.m.
Taking the Lead on What Matters in College: Principles of Excellence for a New Global Century
In the midst of an urgent renegotiation of its compact with society, higher education has come to a pivotal moment. Policy leaders are working with new focus to expand college access, strengthen college preparation, make higher education more affordable, and increase actual graduation rates. Stunningly, however, American society has yet to confront the most basic and far-reaching question of all: what do contemporary college graduates need to know and be able to do?
This silence is dangerous. To students, it sends the self-defeating message that the diploma itself—rather than the quality of learning behind it—is the key to the future. And, to the countless faculty and staff members who have long been working, with both commitment and creativity, to reverse the patterns of student underachievement in college, the silence sends a message that there is no public interest or support for their efforts to raise the quality of learning.
The speakers – all members of AAC&U’s LEAP National Leadership Council – will outline the case we need to make for the continuing importance of liberal education, and will present new “principles of excellence” intended to prepare all students for a new era of complexity and change.
Chair: Ronald A. Crutcher, President, Wheaton College (MA)
Speakers: Carol Geary Schneider, President, AAC&U; Deborah Traskell, Senior Vice President, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company; Blenda Wilson, President, Nellie Mae Education Foundation
FEATURED SESSIONS
Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money
An increasing preoccupation with money has resulted in the inversion of its role in higher education. No longer do students and parents choose the best education that “money can buy.” Instead, they are faced with choosing which college or university will “buy them more money.” In their comprehensive analysis of admission practices, institutional rankings, salaries, hiring practices, scholarships, student attitudes, tuition costs, research programs, library budgets, and class barriers, authors James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield expose the major changes that the Age of Money has wrought in higher education. Focusing on liberal arts and sciences colleges, private research universities, and flagship public institutions, they provide an explicit and coherent model of what an academic institution should offer, while encouraging individual institutions to retain their unique identities.
James Engell is Gurney Professor of English, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Chair of the Department of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University; Anthony Dangerfield has taught at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and Harvard University
The Challenge of Community: Can Civic Engagement Reconnect Liberal Education to Democracy?
Communities and universities often view civic engagement from different perspectives. This session will examine these perspectives in the context of post-Katrina New Orleans, clarify barriers to effective partnerships between campus and community, and begin the work of synthesizing a model of engagement that serves the needs of civil society in a democracy. Two university-based presenters – one whose position focuses on community development and the other with a traditional faculty appointment – will lead discussion of the impediments to and opportunities for effective community/university engagement.
Amy Koritz, Associate Professor of English, Tulane University; Pat T. Evans, Director, International Project for Nonprofit Leadership, University of New Orleans
This session will build on the New Orleans Community Forum
The Council of Europe’s Transnational Project: A Leverage Point for Educating for Social Responsibility
This session will discuss how the Council of Europe’s global initiative on educating for democracy, human rights, and citizenship can serve as a campus incentive in the United States to foster students’ commitment to a more expanded notion of social responsibility. The participating presidents are part of a leadership core who are members of an emerging international higher education leadership network and have signed the Council’s Declaration of Principles. They will explain how they are using the Declaration strategically at their institutions and how other campuses can become involved in this dynamic global network.
Pamela Fox, President, Mary Baldwin College; Sjur Bergan,
Head of Higher Education and Research Division, The Council of Europe; David Pollick, President, Birmingham-Southern University
Fostering Integrative Learning: Lessons Learned
Fostering students’ abilities to integrate learning—over time, across courses, and between academic, personal, and community life—is one of the most important challenges for liberal education today. There are many ways to strengthen the integrative potential of the undergraduate experience. Knowing which approaches``` to select is dependent on campus mission, integrative opportunities already in place, and the character of an institution’s commitment to integrative learning as an educational goal. Participants from the Integrative Learning Project – a three-year project sponsored by AAC&U and The Carnegie Foundation that included diverse institutions – will discuss lessons learned pertaining to the development and assessment of advanced models and strategies to help students pursue their education in more intentional, connected ways.
Pat Hutchings, Vice President, and Mary Taylor Huber, Senior Scholar—both of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
Participants in the Integrative Learning Project will lead roundtable discussions at this session
Countering Students’ Dangerous Disengagement
National studies indicate that over 40% of undergraduates experience depression sufficient to interfere with their academic work; one in four abuses alcohol and drugs. Civic disengagement among students is raising concerns about the future of democratic values, and faculty and students are reporting academic disengagement. The Bringing Theory to Practice Project, developed to investigate and counter these troubling trends, has found that engaged learning – particularly service learning and community-based research – can contribute to student health and to the complexity and depth of students’ civic development. This session will focus on research results, initial learnings, and promising practices. The speakers will present an emerging agenda of what needs to be examined next and will announce a competition for a new round of campus grants.
Barry Checkoway, Professor of Social Work, University of Michigan; Donald W. Harward, Director, Bringing Theory to Practice Project and President Emeritus, Bates College, and a panel of campus project directors from the BTtoP seven Demonstration Stes.
Democracy and the University: A View from Abroad
How do our conversations about democracy, higher education, and the public good change when we shift national contexts? A panel of rectors will discuss some of democracy's big questions in their countries– Spain, Venezuela, and Peru. What is the role of higher education in addressing these questions and in meeting their challenges to them? How does student activism and state sponsorship shape higher education? What are the global implications of linking democracy and education?
Luis Guzmán Barrón-Sobrevilla, Rector de la Universidad Católica del Perú; Javier Uceda-Antolín, Rector de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid; and Léster Rodríguez, Rector de la Universidad de los Andes
This session will be followed by a series of roundtable conversations with additional rectors and faculty members from Colombia, Brazil, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Chile. These sessions are sponsored by Universia – a Network of 985 universities in 11 countries of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal
Using Evidence to Document Liberal Education Outcomes and Promote Institutional Change
One of the goals of AAC&U’s LEAP initiative is to increase institutions use of evidence about how well students are achieving key liberal education outcomes. This session will highlight NSSE results related to liberal education outcomes and feature institutional approaches to assessing these outcomes. Panelists will demonstrate how they are using assessment instruments to take up the pursuit for evidence and use it to document and improve liberal education on their campuses in keeping with their institutional mission.
George Kuh, Chancellors Professor and Director, Jillian Kinzie, Associate Director, and Robert Gonyea, Associate Director – all of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Institute, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research
Liberal Education and the New Global Economy: What Business Leaders and Recent Graduates Say
AAC&U has commissioned two national polls to examine what business leaders and recent graduates think about the importance of liberal education outcomes, especially in terms of meeting the challenges of a competitive global economy. The polls will be fielded in November 2006 as part of AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) campaign, with findings to be released in January 2007. This session will explore the implications of these results for the academy and its efforts to advance liberal education.
Geoffrey Garin, President, Hart Research Associates; Debra Humphreys, AAC&U, Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs
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