Press Release

Contact: Jennifer Wong
202-387-3760 ext. 815
wong@aacu.org

Six Grants Awarded to Implement and Measure New Ways to Affect College Students' Health and Well-Being through Engaged Learning

Washington, DC—June 28, 2005—The Bringing Theory to Practice Project, in partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and with support from the Charles Engelhard Foundation, announced today that grants totaling $540,000 have been awarded to six demonstration site campuses. Each of these institutions is being funded to develop and evaluate new strategies to get students more engaged with their learning, and, in so doing, improve their health and civic engagement.

Sixty-six colleges and universities of all types and from all regions of the country applied to be part of the program. Of these applicants, the project chose six leadership colleges and universities for major support, including Barnard College, Dickinson College, Emory University, Georgetown University, St. Lawrence University, and Syracuse University. Each has demonstrated multiple levels of institutional commitment, will be funded for two years, and is pledging to provide matching funding.

"It is gratifying that there is high interest within the academy, and that the learning community formed by these demonstration sites will establish a firm basis for further understanding of the connections the project is examining," said Ms. Sally E. Pingree, trustee of the Charles Engelhard Foundation.

Each demonstration site examines the nature and extent of relationships among engaged forms of student learning, student well-being (including forms of depression and self-abusive behaviors involving alcohol and other substances), and the development of students' civic responsibility and community engagement. (See below for brief descriptions of each of the demonstration projects.) While independent, each demonstration site has adopted shared research protocols and objectives. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses measuring student and institutional outcomes and comparison group studies are planned for each site and across sites.

"We have created a dedicated community of institutional leaders, scholars, and students who will help us to understand whether, on what grounds, and with what limitations the exercise of engaged forms of learning affect the health, behaviors, and civic development of our students," said Project Coordinator Barry Checkoway, professor at the University of Michigan.

"The Bringing Theory to Practice Project calls our attention to the need for a new integration of the multiple aims and purposes of liberal education," said AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider. "On most campuses, responsibilities for students' cognitive development, their health and well-being, and their civic development have been artificially separated and assigned to different units that rarely work together. As we begin to understand the interaction among these core aims in students' lives and learning, these insights will challenge us to create new connections across the different dimensions of college learning and experience."

"The Bringing Theory to Practice Project asks us to reexamine the 'cultures' (student and faculty) that have developed around our institutions," said Project Director Donald W. Harward, president emeritus, Bates College. "At the specific level, the project examines the wholeness of individual learners; at the institutional level, the project supports the reintegration of education. And at the most general level, the project is participating in efforts to redefine the 'contract' that students, their families, faculties, and the public at large make with higher education."

Demonstration Projects

1. Barnard College: Identity, Community and Belonging: Engaged Learning & Engaged Living for Mental Health: A Demonstration Project
   "Identity, Community and Belonging will benefit two groups of students who are often more vulnerable to the challenges of depression and disengagement: transfers and sophomores. The project will include an academic seminar exploring the concepts of community, identity, and belonging as well as three distinct civic engagement living/learning communities."
2. Dickinson College: Student Impact Assessment of Engaged Learning Initiatives
   "Dickinson will undertake a multiyear study of the effects of student participation in its expanding 'learning communities' program to examine whether variously structured learning experiences--classroom-based, service-learning, outdoor experiential learning, and a non-credit learning community organized around community service--yield different impacts on student learning, mental health, and civic engagement."
3. Emory University: Sophomore Year at Emory Living and Learning Experience: An Interdisciplinary Seminar Course/Internship in Addiction and Depression
   "In order for students to appreciate the complexities of addiction and depression in the world and in their own lives, we will develop a model seminar course/internship experience, in the new Second Year at Emory Residence Hall, that integrates several successful but so far distinct campus programs and uses a problem- and- research-based approach grounded in the interdisciplinary context of the history, science, and impacts of these issues in society."
4. Georgetown University: Connecting the Safety Net to the Heart of the Academic Environment: Curriculum Infusion of Mental Health Issues into Lower Division Courses
   "This project focuses on 'curriculum infusion'--the blending of college health issues into the curriculum content of academic courses to impact positively student attitudes and behaviors, by bringing these important health issues into the academic environment where they can be addressed with intellectual seriousness and free from the fear of social stigma in targeted curriculum modules across a wide spectrum of lower division general education courses."
5. St. Lawrence University: The St. Lawrence University Center for Civic Engagement and Leadership: Creating Opportunities for Agency and Intentionality in Student Learning Experiences
   "St. Lawrence will establish an intensive living-learning program employing the best practices of engaged learning pedagogies and assess their impacts on depression and alcohol abuse among our students through primary data collection using multiple methods over a three-year period, coupled with secondary analysis of our existing student databases."
6. Syracuse University: SAGE (Self-Assess, Grow, Educate) Options
   "Through rigorous evaluation, the SAGE Options Project will demonstrate the association between curricular and cocurricular student engagement as effective prevention strategies that address the roots of depression and substance abuse--indications of interpersonal and intrapersonal disengagement."

For additional information about Bringing Theory to Practice, see www.bringingtheorytopractice.org.

The Bringing Theory to Practice Project is sponsored by the Charles Engelhard Foundation of New York City and developed in partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities. It explores and advocates the academic community's support of engaged learning and the relationship of such learning to student health and civic development.

The project is guided by an interdisciplinary planning group of scholars, researchers, practitioners, and institutional leaders. Currently, there are 200 colleges and universities across the nation connected to the project, many supported by grants, and many in discussion of these topics on their campuses.

AAC&U is the leading national association concerned with the quality, vitality, and public standing of undergraduate liberal education. Its members are committed to extending the advantages of a liberal education to all students, regardless of academic specialization or intended career. Founded in 1915, AAC&U now comprises 1,000 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.

Information about AAC&U membership, programs, and publications can be found at www.aacu.org.