Press Release

CONTACT: Debra Humphreys
(202) 387-3760 (ext. 422)
E-mail: humphreys@aacu.org

Make Liberal Education a National Priority from Kindergarten through Graduate School, Urge National Leaders

Association of American Colleges and Universities and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Announce Partnership To Advance Liberal Education for All

Washington, DC—January 23, 2003—Washington, DC and Menlo Park, CA—Two leading organizations announced today a strategic partnership designed to promote liberal education across the educational spectrum from K-12 through graduate education. The partnership involves the coordination of several existing projects and a new initiative, Liberal Education and Integrative Learning. The alliance brings together the resources of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (The Carnegie Foundation).

"In a complex world, the ability to integrate learning from different sources is increasingly important for professional success, for civic responsibility, and for one's own understanding. One of the defining features of liberal education is achieving this sense of connection-among courses, between academic course work and life experiences, between theory and practice, understanding and action, ideas and values," said Janet Holmgren, chair of The Carnegie Foundation's board of trustees and president, Mills College. "This new partnership will provide needed momentum to advance these skills across the educational spectrum."

"Through the work of the Greater Expectations initiative and our Presidents' Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning (Presidents' CALL), AAC&U has become more convinced than ever that a practical and engaged liberal education is the best form of learning for the 21st century," said John Noonan, president, Bloomfield College, and chair of AAC&U's board of directors. "Bringing together the resources of these two leading organizations will significantly strengthen the national effort to improve the quality of student learning from kindergarten through college."

Throughout its long history, AAC&U has worked with its members (now more than 1000 colleges and universities) to advance and improve liberal education at the undergraduate level. The Carnegie Foundation also has a long history of support for liberal education and a cluster of current initiatives relevant to the new vision of liberal education set forth in AAC&U's recently released report, Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College.

New Initiative on Liberal Education and Integrative Learning

As documented in AAC&U's Greater Expectations report (2002), many campuses have made significant progress in creating conditions for integrated, connected learning. Their strategies include freshman seminars, learning communities, thematic interdisciplinary studies, capstone courses and experiences, electronic portfolios, student self-assessments, and self reflective and intentional learning. Such innovative educational programs, however, all too often exist in isolation, unconnected to other parts of the curriculum or even to other innovations with comparable goals.

This new project on Liberal Education and Integrative Learning will assist faculty as they coordinate these existing approaches and develop new strategies to advance students' skills in intentional and integrative learning. It will develop and disseminate these strategies and effective ways to assess students' growing competence in connecting different parts of their learning. The project will begin by identifying and working with campuses that have already made significant progress in promoting integrated learning and are committed to extending that work in new ways and contexts.

The aim of the project is to create new resources, networks, models, and evidence-based arguments that can both strengthen integrative work and make it more broadly useful across different levels of education.

The three-year collaborative project will begin later in 2003. At The Carnegie Foundation, this project will be directed by Pat Hutchings, vice president, as part of the Foundation's portfolio of initiatives on liberal education. At AAC&U, Andrea Leskes, vice president for education and quality initiatives and director of Greater Expectations, will provide leadership.

Coordinating and Strengthening Existing Initiatives

In addition to this new initiative, this partnership between AAC&U and The Carnegie Foundation brings into fruitful dialogue existing initiatives that each organization already has underway and that, together, support a 21st-century vision of liberal education from K-12 through graduate education. AAC&U is, for instance, working to identify ways to foster liberal education outcomes at progressively more challenging levels from high school through college, and in the context of extensive student mobility across two- and four-year institutions. Carnegie's work on teacher education aims to develop assessment tools and strategies that will help to prepare liberally educated teachers for our nation's schools. Carnegie's initiative on the doctorate works with pilot departments to rethink the character of the Ph.D. and its role in the preparation of scholars to whom we can entrust the responsibility for liberal education. Both organizations are assisting campus faculty and academic administrators as they lead change efforts designed to create intentional educational communities and environments of inclusion, engagement, and high achievement. The two organizations also will continue to cooperate around a common commitment to deepening students' preparation for civic, political, and global engagement.

"Carnegie accomplishes its missions through a number of highly productive partnerships. This strategic collaboration with AAC&U further stimulates many of our efforts and enriches our work," said Carnegie President Lee S. Shulman. "Success in fostering liberal education requires intentionality and interconnection at every level of the educational system," said AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider. "We are very pleased to be working with the Carnegie Foundation at this crucial time."

AAC&U is the leading national association devoted to advancing and strengthening liberal learning for all students, regardless of academic specialization or intended career. Since its founding in 1915, AAC&U's membership has grown to more than 1000 accredited public and private colleges and universities of every type and size. AAC&U functions as a catalyst and facilitator, forging links among presidents, administrators, and faculty members who are engaged in institutional and curricular planning. Its mission is to reinforce the collective commitment to liberal education at both the national and local levels and to help individual institutions keep the quality of student learning at the core of their work as they evolve to meet new economic and social challenges.

Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center with a primary mission "to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold, and dignify the profession of the teacher." The Foundation, located in Menlo Park, Calif., fulfills this mission through its contributions to improvements in education policy and practice.

For information about AAC&U, The Carnegie Foundation, or organizations funding the various initiatives mentioned above, see www.aacu.org or www.carnegiefoundation.org.