Partnerships

AAC&U currently partners with the following organizations on projects that advance liberal education. Through funded projects and sponsored meetings, AAC&U also has robust relationships with hundreds of campuses, dozens of foundations and governmental agencies, and additional partner organizations.

American Conference of Academic Deans
The American Conference of Academic Deans (ACAD) was founded in 1945 as a national organization for deans from institutions belonging to AAC&U, which, at that time, was called the Association of American Colleges. Although membership in ACAD is now open to all academic officers, the historic affiliation between AAC&U and ACAD continues through mutual commitment to fostering liberal education, and through cosponsorship of annual meetings and other collaborative programs.

The Aspen Institute
AAC&U and the Aspen Institute cosponsor the Wye Faculty Seminar: Citizenship in the American Polity. Each summer, this week-long seminar on key themes and texts in U.S. and Western democracy is held at the Wye Plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The seminar themes include the scope and limits of government; unity and plurality; dissent and civil disobedience; and education for the polity. For additional information, contact Charlene Costello at Charlene.Costello@aspeninstitute.org.

Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future
To coincide with the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, AAC&U and the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future are encouraging new ideas, campus-based innovations, research, and collaborations to advance student and campus commitments to sustainable development. AAC&U has entered this partnership as part of its Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility initiative. The partnership links commitment to socially responsible citizenship in a diverse and interconnected world with similar commitment to a strong economy, flourishing environment, and healthy society.

Campus Compact
AAC&U and Campus Compact co-sponsor the Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement. This center is designed to support leadership, scholarship, and campus-community partnerships that advance the multiple and profound connections between civic engagement and liberal learning.

Campus Women Lead
Campus Women Lead, formerly the National Initiative for Women in Higher Education, is an affiliate of the AAC&U Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives dedicated to honoring, strengthening, and mobilizing the leadership of women in support of inclusive excellence and the New Academy. Through development of a model for inclusive transformational leadership, Campus Women Lead seeks to create an academy in which women of many communities work together in multicultural alliances, and women in all positions of the academy are empowered to lead.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
AAC&U has a long-standing relationship with the Carnegie Foundation. Recent project partnerships include the Political Engagement Project, which addresses the growing disengagement of young people from politics. AAC&U and the Carnegie Foundation also cosponsored Integrative Learning: Opportunities to Connect. This project aimed to expand the reach of educational innovations in integrative learning.

Claremont Graduate University School of Education (CGU)
AAC&U partnered with CGU in the California-based James Irvine Campus Diversity Initiative Evaluation Project. AAC&U helped campuses involved in the project analyze the effectiveness of campus diversity initiatives and build capacity for self-assessment.

Coalition on the Academic Workforce
Along with other learned societies and disciplinary organizations in the humanities and social sciences, AAC&U participates in the Coalition on the Academic Workforce. Established in 1997, the coalition works on issues related to part-time and contingent faculty.

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce is an independent, nonprofit research and policy institute that studies the link between education, career qualifications, and workforce demands. The Center’s director, Anthony Carnevale, also serves on the National Leadership Council for AAC&U's LEAP initiative.

Higher Education Research Institute “Spirituality in Higher Education” Project
AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider serves on the national advisory board of the Spirituality in Higher Education Project. This project is studying the level and intensity of spiritual experiences among college students, how spiritual searching and behavior is changing on campus, and what these changes mean for higher education institutions and students.

National Communication Association
AAC&U partners with the Communicating Common Ground (CCG) project of the National Communication Association as they celebrate five years of promoting diversity in our nation’s schools. The partnership is grounded in our shared resources that promote diversity and provide opportunities for the CCG project to publish reports. The current chair of the Communicating Common Ground project will serve as the liaison with AAC&U.

National Forum on Information Literacy (NFIL)
Through AAC&U and over ninety other member organizations that are committed to individual empowerment within the information society, NFIL examines the role of information in everyday life and integrates information literacy into their programs. It also supports, initiates, and monitors information literacy projects both in the United States and abroad. NFIL actively encourages the creation and adoption of information literacy guidelines by such regulatory bodies as state departments of education, commissions on higher education, and academic governing boards. NFIL also works with teacher education programs to ensure that new teachers are able to incorporate information literacy into their teaching.

National Gallery of Writing
An initiative of the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Gallery of Writing is a Web site where people who perhaps have never thought of themselves as writers—mothers, bus drivers, fathers, veterans, nurses, firefighters, sanitation workers, stockbrokers—select and post one thing they have written that is important to them. The gallery features several types of display spaces that can accommodate any composition format and all types of writing. As a National Partner participating in this initiative, AAC&U hosts its own gallery focused on the meaning of liberal education in the twenty-first century.

National Humanities Alliance (NHA)
AAC&U is a founding member of the NHA--a coalition of more than eighty associations concerned with national humanities policy--and AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider serves on its board of directors. The NHA advocates for support for humanities research and represents its members in matters of policy or legislation affecting work in the humanities. NHA is the only organization that represents the U.S. humanities community as a whole.

National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
AAC&U is a cosponsor of the NSSE institute that builds on data collected by the NSSE surveys and is aimed at improving undergraduate education by documenting and disseminating the best practices of those higher education institutions that most fully engage students in learning. The institute is part of the Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP) initiative. AAC&U Vice President Caryn McTighe Musil serves on the NSSE Institute partnership advisory council.

Pathways to College Network
Pathways to College Network is a coalition of thirty organizations and fifteen foundations promoting college access and high achievement for underserved students, including low-income students, underrepresented minority students, students with disabilities, and first-generation college-going students. AAC&U is the lead partner for the eleven-member College Access and Success Working Group. This group aims to help postsecondary education leaders engage their entire campus community in translating "what works" for underserved student success into comprehensive educational practice.

The TLT Group (Teaching, Learning, Technology)
AAC&U is a cosponsor with the TLT Group of Greater Expectations for 21st-Century Learning: Implications of Technology for General Education. This online series of Webcast has covered writing, inquiry, learning about other cultures, and integrative learning, focusing on how technology changes both how and what is learned in colleges.

Washington Internship Institute (WII)
AAC&U cooperates with WII on the Faculty Fellows Internship Program. Through professional internship opportunities, the Faculty Fellows Internship Program enables college and university faculty to broaden their professional, disciplinary, and personal horizons by working for one semester in Washington, DC. Fellows are immersed in a professional environment, such as a government agency, nonprofit organization, national association, museum, or foundation.