AAC&U Publications

Practicing Democracy: A Toolkit for Educating Civic Professionals

Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success, 2nd Edition

To ask whether students are “college-ready” is to concentrate on factors beyond the control of higher education. With this publication, the authors flip the question to provide a new perspective on creating institutional value and facilitating...

The Community's College: The Pursuit of Democracy, Economic Development, and Success

As well as offering an important message to state and federal policy makers, this book serves as a roadmap for aspiring leaders of community colleges as well as a text for leadership and higher education courses.

Getting Ready: The Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Post-Pandemic World

The author explores how colleges and universities can draw from the pandemic’s lessons about science, history, culture, and technology to prepare future generations of students for work, civic participation, and making meaning in their own lives.

Rx Racial Healing: A Guide to Embracing Our Humanity

This publication provides individuals an overview of the methodology, tools, and resources needed to facilitate and engage in the Rx Racial Healing approach for transformational change in colleges, organizations, and communities.

Interfaith Cooperation for Our Times: Educating Citizens for a Diverse Democracy

Focusing on the work of the Interfaith Leadership in Higher Education Initiative, a partnership between AAC&U and Interfaith Youth Core, this publication showcases institutional efforts to strengthen commitments to interfaith teaching and learning.

What We Value: Public Health, Social Justice, and Educating for Democracy

This vital book demonstrates how tumultuous events reveal what we value and the ways in which a liberal education can help us to learn from one another while cultivating the personal and social responsibility necessary for furthering the common good.

Undergraduate Research in Online, Virtual, and Hybrid Courses: Proactive Practices for Distant Students

With the growing interest in undergraduate research as a high-impact practice, and the recognition that college education is increasingly moving online, this book provides a framework, guidance from pioneering practitioners, and a range of examples.

Neighborhood Democracy: Building Anchor Partnerships Between Colleges and Their Communities

This book argues that higher education can and must again take leadership in promoting the participatory processes and instilling the democratic values needed to build a vibrant and fair society.

Paths to Success: How Community Colleges Are Strengthening Guided Pathways to Ensure Students Are Learning

In 2019, twenty community colleges joined Strengthening Guided Pathways and Career Success by Ensuring Students Are Learning, a two-year project led by the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

Making Liberal Education Inclusive: The Roots and Reach of the LEAP Framework for College Learning

This publication tells the LEAP story and situates it within the broader context of AAC&U’s work to integrally connect liberal learning with the wider world, and combine liberal education with inclusive excellence and equity.

High-Impact ePortfolio Practice: A Catalyst for Student, Faculty, and Institutional Learning

Published by Stylus in association with AAC&U, this publication provides expert guidance on deploying the ePortfolio as a high-impact practice. The authors present a comprehensive research-based framework, along with practical examples and...

We Hold These Truths: Dismantling Racial Hierarchies, Building Equitable Communities

This publication describes the work of Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at colleges and universities across the ctountry to dismantle the tools that perpetuate oppression and entrenched racial hierarchies....

Teaching for Liberal Learning in Higher Education

Conversations about liberal education typically focus broadly on mission, goals, curricula, cocurricular educational opportunities, or overall student outcomes. Conversations about teaching and learning, by...

What Liberal Education Looks Like: What It Is, Who It’s For, and Where It Happens

This publication presents a guiding vision of educational excellence that is grounded in equity and inclusion. In distilling the principles, practices, and contemporary challenges of liberal education, this signature AAC&U publication clearly...

From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education

Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the AAC&U and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, From Equity Talk to Equity Walk provides practical guidance on the design and application...

A Comprehensive Approach to Assessment of High-Impact Practices

High-impact practices—such as learning communities, capstones, undergraduate research, and community-based experiences—are effective pedagogies, and most of these practices have been around for decades. Given the intense focus across...

Tradition Shaping Change: General Education in the Middle East and North Africa

Surveying the landscape of general education and core curricula in the Middle East and North Africa, contributors focus on the indigenous features and boundary-crossing goals and outcomes of specific programs in Egypt, Saudi...

We Have a Rubric for That: The VALUE Approach to Assessment

First introduced in 2009 as an alternative to standardized tests, the VALUE rubrics are now at the center of conversations about the quality of student learning within and across higher education institutions. We Have a Rubric for That reports...

Excellence: A Renewed Call for Change in Undergraduate Science Education

This publication of the AAC&U Inclusive Excellence Commission argues for a dynamic reconceptualization of excellence in undergraduate science education—one that advances innovation and positions inclusion as its necessary precondition.