2008 Annual Meeting

INTENTIONAL LEARNING, UNSCRIPTED CHALLENGES
Knowledge and Imagination for an Interdependent World

January 23-26, 2008
Washington, DC

Pre-Meeting Symposium on January 23:
No Longer Optional: Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility

AAC&U’s 2007 report, College Learning for the New Global Century, poses several fundamental questions:

• What do college graduates need to know and be able to do to thrive in an unpredictable future? 
  
• How can institutions demonstrate that students are actually achieving the kinds of learning they need for life, work, and citizenship? 
  
• How are institutions structured—internally and externally—to build real-world capabilities that empower students to apply their knowledge to complex real-world challenges?

Collectively, these questions underscore the need for a renewed sense of clear purpose, across the curriculum and co-curriculum.  Participants at AAC&U’s 2008 annual meeting will explore innovative and imaginative strategies and structures for college learning—purposeful pathways that clearly and intentionally connect wide-ranging knowledge of science, cultures, and society; high-level intellectual and practical skills; active commitment to personal and social responsibility; and demonstrated ability to apply learning to complex problems and challenges. Participants will also explore the role of assessment in measuring achievement of essential outcomes and in providing useful data to ensure that all students get the education they need and deserve in today’s world.

The urgent need for such pathways, unfortunately, arises in a context of stalemated politics, public cynicism, and a depleted sense of the commons.  Restoring creative, collaborative, and democratic commons, therefore, is a necessary pre-condition for teaching the necessary arts of inquiry, innovation, and political imagination.  Higher education can model such necessary collaboration between national and regional associations, disciplinary societies, accreditation groups, and institutions from all sectors—many of which are already deeply engaged with such fundamental questions.

Purposeful pathways must be built across and within disciplines, between school and college, and from the classroom to the real world.  They will enable students to integrate and apply their learning—at increasingly sophisticated levels and across disparate fields of study.  By setting expectations and creating environments in which new pathways for students and faculty can emerge, higher education can tap the creative energy at the intersections where knowledge and ideas collide and merge and applications evolve. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at 202.387.3760 or write to meetings@aacu.org.

Sponsors

Please contact the Development Office at (202) 884-7421 or e-mail Development@aacu.org for information about corporate sponsorship opportunities for the 2008 Annual Meeting.