AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider released a statement mourning “this weekend’s murderous attack on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people at Pulse in Orlando.” She notes that the AAC&U community “grieve[s] for the tragic loss of so many lives and extend[s] our sympathy to all who are suffering from this act of carnage.” Noting that “we all are harmed by this horrific act of violence against LGBT individuals and their humanity, by this retreat to a culture of gun violence against members of our communities, and by this damaging assault on the core principles of a just and sustainable democracy,” she called on the community and our nation’s leaders to “respond to this sobering moment by recommitting to those core principles, for our nation and for the world.” See the full statement.   

AAC&U, SHEEO, and Taskstream are cosponsoring a webinar in June as part of the Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Learning Outcomes Assessment (MSC)/VALUE Initiative Webinar Series. On Thursday, June 16, the webinar topic is “Data Analysis and Use,” and individuals from participating MSC campuses will share insights on how to use data to inform changes to assignment design. Registration for this webinar can be found on Tasksteam’s website. Learn more about the Multi-State Collaborative and VALUE.

The National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), an AAC&U partner organization, has released a new policy statement, Higher Education Quality: Why Documenting Learning Matters. In this new statement, NILOA argues that improving student and institutional performance must be a national priority. AAC&U President and NILOA Board Member Carol Geary Schneider has stated that “the assessment movement is poised to drive a sea change in what actually counts as meaningful, actionable evidence by putting students’ authentic work at the center of the assessment inquiry.” For more information about this new policy statement, visit the NILOA website,  www.learningoutcomesassessment.org.

“Liberal Arts Illuminated: Pathways, Possibilities, Partnerships,” will be held July 11–13 and is being hosted by the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Central Minnesota. The conference will bring together leadership, faculty, and trustees from liberal arts colleges, as well as public policymakers, for a substantive generative conversation about the future of liberal arts institutions. AAC&U is a sponsoring organization. Register here by June 1 to receive the early bird discount of $50.

AAC&U surveyed Chief Academic Officers at member institutions from July-October 2015 concerning priorities related to learning outcomes, assessment, general education design, high-impact practices, and data tracking and goal setting around equity and quality learning. With support from USA Funds, AAC&U conducted structured interviews with 14 of the respondents focusing on minority serving and predominately white institutions and particularly on those who were tracking data in at least some disaggregated ways. Complete findings from the extensive survey were released in three separate reports.

AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider will keynote three LEAP State convenings in the next few weeks. Schneider spoke in Michigan, Texas, and Wisconsin on the LEAP Challenge and creating Guided Learning Pathways to increase student success. In Michigan, President Schneider and AAC&U Board Member Richard Guarasci presented on how community engagement can increase both persistence and success.  In Texas, Schneider focused on using the LEAP Challenge to map guided learning pathways that result in deep learning and long-term student success.  President Schneider presented at LEAP Wisconsin’s LEAP Day event on February 29.  Schneider will join colleagues in Wisconsin to celebrate a decade of LEAP WI and reflect on how the LEAP initiative has become a movement to help students blend liberal and pre-professional learning. In addition—in other LEAP States news—on February 26, AAC&U’s Debra Humphreys and Susan Albertine were keynote speakers at the “Supporting Faculty Innovation in the 21st-Century” conference in Indiana and on March 4, LEAP State partners in Massachusetts will sponsor the “Advancing Student Success” conference.

AAC&U Board Member Candace Thille, an education researcher at Stanford, expresses her concerns about adaptive learning technologies in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Thille cautions against outsourcing to for-profit companies the work of developing learning analytics tools before the field has matured, concluding that, “If colleges themselves took up the learning-analytics challenge to ‘co-construct’ learning activities, institutions could both ‘support teaching and learning and help us understand better how learning happens.’" In addition to serving on AAC&U’s board of directors, Thille served on the Digital Working Group formed as part of AAC&U’s General Education Maps and Markers project.  Watch also for forthcoming GEMs report authored by Bret Eynon and Randy Bass and focused on liberal education in the new digital ecosystem of learning—due out this spring.