READY OR NOT
Global Challenges, College Learning, and America’s Promise
January 21-24, 2009
Seattle, Washington
Pre-Meeting Symposium on January 21:
SUSTAINABILITY: Place, Responsibilities, and the Curriculum
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The deadline for proposals was Monday, July 21, 2008. AAC&U is no longer accepting proposals.
Description of the Meeting
Themes
Guidelines for Submitting a Proposal
Length of Presentations
Session Formats
Online Resources
How to Submit a Proposal
Final Reminders
Dates to Remember
If You Have Questions
Meeting Description
AAC&U’s Annual Meetings provide opportunities for participants to examine the relationship between college learning and society. In recent years, we have collectively insisted that attention to the tradition, language, and practice of liberal education is critical if we hope to meet the many challenges of the world today. Our failure to fully engage our publics with the kinds of learning best suited to our current needs persists even as the creative energies, widespread innovations, and intentional efforts of campuses across the nation are signaling resurgence in the vitality and relevance of liberal education.
Are we ready to exercise the leadership higher education and American society needs? Are our students ready to learn? How can we boost their readiness? Is society ready to make difficult choices about educational priorities? Are our institutions ready to face the societal and economic changes at hand?
Are we ready to fulfill America’s promise—or not?
Meeting Themes
A Guiding Vision for Liberal Education
Our dependence on a knowledge economy demands that we educate twice as many students, but do so with fewer resources. At the same time, there is growing recognition of liberal education as an asset in a creative economy.
- How do we best continue to champion the aims and outcomes of liberal education?
- How do we build support for the priority of preparing all college students for effective citizenship, personal growth, and professional success?
- The sciences and related disciplines stand at the top of the curricular pyramid as a public policy priority, while assaults on the humanities for alleged “political correctness” remain. How do we make sure both are seen as essential to liberal education?
Inclusive Excellence
An increasing number of students are coming from traditionally underserved, underprepared demographic groups, specifically low-income families and racial and ethnic minorities. There is a strong policy focus on preparation, access, and degree attainment, but it is accompanied by a notable policy silence on what students need to accomplish in college.
- What strategies are successful in creating capacity and supporting academic progress and high achievement, with special attention to underserved student achievement?
- How are institutions translating into practice their commitment to help all students achieve essential learning outcomes?
Intentional and Integrative Learning
There is growing importance of cross-sector “seamless” linkages across P-12, community colleges, and four year institutions, as well as attention directed toward multiple institutional enrollment, extended time to degree, and online curricula. Campuses are also building shared responsibilities across all parts of the educational experience so that each course will not be an island unto itself.
- How are campuses building shared responsibility for the aims and outcomes of liberal education?
- How are they making intentional and integrative connections across the multiple sites and sources of student learning?
- How are students integrating the strengths of pre-professional study with those of the arts and sciences? How are they working across disciplines, with faculty, on problems that require multiple perspectives and investigation for their solution?
Civic, Diversity, and Global Engagement
There is strong campus leadership for civic, ethical, intercultural, and global learning, but persistent difficulty in reclaiming the public and democratic purposes of college learning and liberal education. Higher education continues to be viewed as a private, rather than public, benefit.
- How are institutions and individuals promoting personal and social responsibility for a world lived in common as an essential dimension of college study?
- What models are showing evidence of successfully engaging diversity, democracy, interdependence, inequalities, and societal challenges in all students’ learning?
- How are students using “big questions” to tie their science studies to global challenges and public policy choices?
Authentic Evidence
There is intense scrutiny of higher education, coupled with shallow understanding of exactly how we work, resulting in unpromising proposals for improvement (e.g., standardized testing). There is a growing consensus on a set of “essential learning outcomes”, but there is no clear set data demonstrating how higher education is doing in actually fostering these outcomes.
- How are institutions and individuals advancing assessment practices that deepen, integrate, and demonstrate achievement?
- What strategies have been successful in advocating learning-centered assessment policies and developing campus cultures of meaningful assessment?
- What are we learning about e-portfolio frameworks and other assessment experimentation?
Proposals should also address practices that include or reflect:
- Work across general education and the major, including pre-professional studies;
- Progressively more challenging levels of learning, from first year through final studies;
- Active, hands-on, collaborative, and inquiry-based pedagogies;
- Milestone and capstone assessments that help students deepen, integrate, and demonstrate their learning;
- Well-designed programs of academic and social support for all students;
- Special attention to access and success for students from underserved communities.
Guidelines for Submitting a Proposal
We encourage proposals that raise provocative questions, that will engage participants in discussion, and that will create and encourage dialogue ¾ before, during, and after the conference itself.
Proposals should reflect current work,
recent findings, and/ or
new perspectives.
- Session proposals should link the work of multiple institutions and illustrate diverse perspectives. We particularly welcome student perspectives.
- AAC&U is committed to presenting an annual meeting at which sessions and participants reflect the pluralism of our campus communities. Proposals for sessions with diverse presenters are especially welcome.
- Make it interactive! Please do not read your paper at the Annual Meeting. This is the top complaint from audience members each year.
Suggestions from Participants who attended the 2008 Annual Meeting:
Talk about the challenges – not just the successes
The sessions that spoke about potential pitfalls and ‘lessons learned’ were most valuable. I appreciated hearing about how well a new program was working, but I found it more valuable to hear about some of the challenges that were eventually overcome.
Don’t just talk about your own institution
Presenters should compress the remarks they make about their institutions. A brief introduction is fine, but audiences want to hear about programs, data, etc. We want to learn how to apply this work to our own institutions.
Length of Presentations
NOTE: Most sessions will be 60 or 75 minutes long, with a very limited number of 90-minute sessions. All sessions must include ample opportunities for dialogue with participants.
Session Formats
NEW IN 2009
To provide more opportunities for brief, useful, possibly provocative, and – we hope – creative presentations, we have created two new formats. Taking the 20/20 sessions a step further, we are looking for a series of ten-minute presentations (yes, ten minutes) to be combined with others into 60-minute sessions. Take the challenge...
- Leadership Challenges: “What I did when …” or “What I wish I had done"
Let us know how you dealt with a specific problem, situation, class, student, parent, trustee – or what you wish you had done. If you’ve experienced it, chances are your colleagues have, too – or soon will – and they can now learn strategies for handling it.
- “If I ran the … [Program, Department, College, University – you name it]"
You have ten minutes. Make your pitch for the program you’ve always wanted, the process that would solve your most annoying problem, the class everyone would register for, the structure that should have been in place from the beginning. And be prepared for the audience response.
Other Formats
20/20 Session: To the Point
This format was created in response to those who want practical “how-to” information – and want the information quickly. The 20/20 sessions are intended to be energetic and creative, compressing what might have been a 75 minute session into a crisp, dynamic delivery of that session’s core points. Please note:
- 20/20 sessions are 60 minutes long and comprised of two, separately submitted 20-minute presentations (on similar or compatible topics), each followed by a 10-minute discussion.
- All 20/20 Sessions will have an AAC&U moderator to ensure that time limits are followed.
- We suggest that 20/20 sessions have no more than two speakers for each 20-minute presentation.
- This format is one of the few for which single-speaker presentations are accepted.
- A proposal for a 20/20 session is for one 20-minute presentation.
Research Session
Presentation of findings, works in progress, or new methodologies pertaining to teaching and learning. (Research findings can also be presented in a 20/20 session, if preferred.)
Panel Presentation
Traditional format with presentation(s) followed by discussion with the audience
Discussion Session
Brief presentation(s) with the primary focus on discussion and/or small-group exercises.
Homepage Session: A Focus on Technology
Presentation of curricular models or programs that use new technologies to enhance teaching and learning
Breakfast Roundtables
Informal roundtable conversations typically focusing on one specific program or institution. (Conference participants are welcome to focus on one presentation or circulate among many.)
Online Resources for your Session
Supplemental Material Available on the Web
If your proposal pertains to a project, program, course, writings, or other feature for which there is (or could be) descriptive material on the Web, please provide the URL address with your proposal. AAC&U’s Web site will include these links when we post the online conference program in the autumn.
Advance Readings
We encourage you to make available advance readings that participants will find useful for your session. We ask that you send us these documents (in Word or PDF files), and we will post them with the online conference program. If these readings are already posted, just send us the link and we will include that.
How to Submit a Proposal
Electronic Submission: Please submit your proposal electronically as directed on the form. If you need assistance, please contact Lucia Cruz or call 202-387-3760.
Deadline: Please submit your proposal on or before Monday, July 21, 2008.
Notification: You should receive an automatic message indicating receipt of your proposal when it is submitted. If you do not receive this message, please send an e-mail to Lucia Cruz.
Final Confirmation re: Receipt of Proposal: AAC&U will send an e-mail on or before August 11 to every Contact Person as a final confirmation of receipt of your proposal. Please make a note of this. If you do not receive this e-mail, it is possible that your proposal was lost in the data transfer.
Acceptance: You will be notified via email by September 29, 2008, regarding the status of your proposal.
Registration Fees: All presenters at the Annual Meeting are responsible for the appropriate registration fees. Please be sure all presenters submitted in your proposal have this information. Registration materials will be available online beginning September 15, 2008.
Final Reminders:
- Please complete all fields, including information pertaining to all additional speakers.
- Please include links to supplemental materials, if available.
By submitting a proposal, you agree to:
- Register and pay fees, if the proposal is accepted.
- Inform your co-presenters about the proposal’s status and the need for all presenters to register and pay fees
Dates to Remember:
July 21, 2008
Proposals due to AAC&U
August 11, 2008
Notification of receipt of proposals sent to all Contact Persons
September 15, 2008
Registration materials available online
September 30, 2008
Acceptance (or rejection) of proposals sent to all Contact Persons
If You Have Questions or Need Additional Information
Please do not hesitate to contact us at meetings@aacu.org or call AAC&U at 202-387-3760. We look forward to receiving your proposal.
REMINDER: Session proposals must be received by July 21, 2008
|
