READY OR NOT
Global Challenges, College Learning, and America’s Promise

January 21-24, 2009
Seattle, Washington

WYE DEANS' SEMINAR

Co-Sponsored by The Aspen Institute, AAC&U, and ACAD

Thursday, January 22, 2:30-4:00 p.m.

The Aspen Institute, AAC&U, and ACAD are pleased to invite presidents, chief academic officers, and deans to a demonstration of a Wye Seminar on Citizenship in the American and Global Polity.  The seminar is scheduled for Thursday, January 22, 2:45-4:00 pm, and is held in conjunction with the 2009 Annual Meeting.   Participants in past annual seminars have found that the excitement of intellectual collaboration is a thrilling and meaningful experience in their professional and personal lives.  The significant texts, the dialectic seminar format, and the multiple perspectives that you and your fellow participants bring to the seminar lead to a deeper understanding of complex issues challenging those who hope to be even more effective as leaders.

The four texts for this year’s seminar include an excerpt from Plato’s Republic on the source of justice and injustice, an excerpt from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics asking us to consider the true nature of happiness, the Declaration of Independence, and an address by Aung San Suu Kyi on “A Culture of Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights.”

The role of the seminar’s moderator is to assist you in your discoveries.  The moderator does not lecture on the texts or supply answers.  In traditional Aspen fashion, the moderator is a guide to using texts to deepen self-knowledge of your core values, ideas, and assumptions.  The seminar texts, both classic and contemporary, help to make the elements of our thinking more visible.

The seminar is essentially a collaborative journey.  Each participant is an essential member of the team with a unique educational experience, cultural background, and personal hierarchy of values.  The success of the seminar depends on everyone being willing to contribute to make room for others, asking questions of each other that will help clarify values, assumptions, and leadership claims.  As each participant looks not only to her own needs, but the needs of other participants, the seminar thrives.

This seminar demonstration is offered to introduce AAC&U and ACAD members with the Wye Seminars, which are held each summer on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Queenstown, Maryland.  The Wye Deans’ Seminar is scheduled for June 14-19, 2009; the Wye Faculty Seminar is scheduled for July 19-25, 2009.

For more information about the Wye Seminar and/or to register for the demonstration, please email charlene.costello@aspeninstitute.org or call 410-820-5374.