Liberal Education, Summer 2010
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Summer2010Vol.96No.3

2010 Annual Meeting

This issue presents highlights of the 2010 annual meeting. Also included are articles on the hidden costs of low four-year graduation rates, interfaith dialogue, the pedagogy of the debate over evolution and intelligent design, teaching for ethical reasoning, and California’s Master Plan.

Table of Contents
President's Message

President's Message: LEAP at the Five-Year Mark

By Carol Geary Schneider

From 1818 R Street NW

From the Editor

By David Tritelli

Featured Topic

The Experience of Liberal Education

By Edward L. Ayers
“Experience” is a healthy-sounding word, but what do we really mean by it? And how do we persuade people that higher education fosters important forms of experience, that “experience” is an integral part of any vital liberal learning?

The Twin Elements of Learning: Knowledge and Judgment

By William M. Sullivan
Liberal education requires going beyond an exclusive concern with “knowing that” to include developing students’ capacity to “know how” as well. But for real liberal education, “knowing that” and “knowing how,” even taken together, are not enough; “knowing why” and “knowing when” are also required.

Global Education & Liberal Education

By Peter N. Stearns
It is both possible and desirable to define liberal education in “global” terms. But no effort to provide such an education can possibly succeed without a solid curricular base, which must be the focus of any discussion of the relationship between global and liberal education.

Perspectives

The Hidden Costs of Low Four-Year Graduation Rates

By Daniel F. Sullivan
The single most important step colleges and universities—especially public colleges and universities—can take to lower the student and family cost of college attendance is to improve retention, thereby increasing the four-year graduation rate.

Teaching for Ethical Reasoning in Liberal Education

By Robert J. Sternberg
An eight-step model of ethical reasoning is presented to illustrate how, within the context of a liberal education, ethical reasoning can be taught across the curriculum.

Interfaith Dialogue and Higher Education

By S. Alan Ray
Given how other social movements have significantly affected curricula, student programming, and institutional priorities, what is the highest aspiration we can set for colleges and universities with regard to interfaith cooperation?

Avoiding Mixed Metaphor: The Pedagogy of the Debate over Evolution and Intelligent Design

By Kenneth L. Carter and Jeni Welsh
The ongoing controversy over evolution can be used pedagogically to examine how scientific predictions are made, how evidence is applied, and how it is determined whether unexpected findings threaten the overall theory or merely require revisions to it.

Our Purposes: Personal Reflections on Character Development and Social Responsibility in Higher Education

By Arthur W. Chickering
Recognition of the importance of outcomes related to moral and ethical development, other dimensions of personal development, and civic engagement is a result of decades of educational reform. But have colleges and universities succeeded in helping students achieve these outcomes?

My View

Any Direction Home for California’s Master Plan?

By Paul J. Zingg
A strong liberal education is key both to answering the most vociferous critics of the purpose and performance of public higher education, and to fulfilling our obligations to the society in which our students will take their place.

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