Sources and Experts

Caryn McTighe Musil

Caryn McTighe Musil

Caryn McTighe Musil is the Senior Vice President at the Association of American Colleges and Universities and oversees the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives.

Under her leadership, the office has been working to mobilize powerful and overlapping educational reform movements involving civic, diversity, global learning, women’s issues, and personal and social responsibility.

Dr. Musil is currently directing a multi-project national initiative, “Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility,” that focuses on engaging students with core questions about their ethical responsibilities to self and others, and about their responsibilities as citizens in a diverse democracy. It is funded by the Templeton Foundation.

Dr. Musil, with her colleague Kevin Hovland, also directs a FIPSE-funded project, “Shared Futures: General Education for Shared Learning,” which seeks to infuse global learning across general education. Its premise is that in our interdependent but unequal world, higher education can help prepare students not only to thrive in such a world but to remedy its inequities.

In addition, she serves as Director of the Program on the Status and Education of Women, which produces a tri-quarterly online newsletter On Campus with Women. The program also offers workshops on women’s leadership for inclusive excellence through the Campus Women Lead project, and provides national leadership on issues concerning women in higher education. A new status report on women in higher education, A Measure of Equity, will be released in late 2008.

Dr. Musil’s interest in civic engagement led to the creation of the Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement, which promotes civic engagement as a priority for students so they become aware of other communities outside their own and make the changes necessary to thrive in an interdependent, global society. She has also been working with the Council of Europe to further the global aspect of civic engagement so that institutions can foster student learning about democratic cultures and human rights in our world.

Publications and Expertise

In addition to her office’s projects, she has written and edited a number of publications, including Assessing Global Learning: Matching Good Intentions with Good Practice (2006), Assessing Campus Diversity Initiatives: A Guide for Campus Practitioners (2002), “Educating for Citizenship” (2003), To Form a More Perfect Union: Campus Diversity Initiatives, ed (1999), Assessing Campus Diversity Initiatives: A Guide for Campus Practitioners, ed (2003) and Gender, Science and the Undergraduate Curriculum, ed (2001). She is a frequent plenary speaker and workshop leader on civic, diversity, global, and women’s issues within higher education.

Caryn McTighe Musil received her B.A. from Duke University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University. Before moving into national level administrative work in higher education, she was a faculty member for eighteen years.

Dr. Musil has been an educational consultant and outside evaluator at numerous colleges and universities, with a special interest in faculty and curriculum development and has served as a reviewer and outside evaluator for FIPSE, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Ford Foundation. A frequent speaker and presenter various national conferences, Dr. Musil has been writing, teaching, and speaking on women, gender, and diversity throughout her career.

Past Projects

Dr. Musil served as Associate Director of AAC&U's major initiative, "American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning," from 1993-2001 and directed its ninety-two institution Curriculum and Faculty Development Network. To enhance that network, she was Project Director of two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes, "Boundaries and Borderlands: The Search for Recognition and Community in America," held at Williams College in 1994 and 1995. Through a William and Flora Hewlett Foundation grant, Dr. Musil directed that institute again at Brown University in 2000 for 250 faculty and administrators from 40 institutions.

From 2002-2006, she directed the Bildner Foundation Campus Diversity for eight New Jersey institutions doing diversity work in a statewide initiative. The New Jersey Campus Diversity Initiative had three overarching goals: reduce prejudice, promote intergroup understanding and foster the comprehensive institutional change needed to support such learning.

From 2001-2004, Dr. Musil was Project Director for Liberal Education and Global Citizenship: The Arts of Democracy, funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to work with institutions to incorporate global issues and social responsibility into the major. The impetus for this project came from her involvement directing a Ford Foundation project with higher education representatives from India, South Africa, and the United States who met in a variety of forums and seminars over a five-year period to explore cross-cutting issues about higher education's role in diverse democracies.

At La Salle University Dr. Musil taught their first women's studies course in 1973, was instrumental in establishing a women's studies minor, served as Coordinator of the Women's Studies Program, and helped found a campus day care center. In 1984, she was selected as the Executive Director of the National Women's Studies Association, a position she held for over six years. In 1986, she was named a Pennsylvania "Woman of Distinction" by the Women's Campaign Fund and in 1987 was chosen as a Commonwealth Speaker by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. She was named in Who's Who of American Women in 1995.