AAC&U 2004 Annual Meeting Resources

PRACTICING LIBERAL EDUCATION:
Deepening Knowledge, Pursuing Justice, Taking Action

2004 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities
January 21-24, 2004 / Washington, DC

Conference Resources

The following sessions were part of AAC&U’s 2004 Annual Meeting and include links to resources. Please see the Conference Program for a listing and description of all sessions presented at the meeting.

Rewiring Liberal Education
T. Mills Kelly asks in "Remaking Liberal Education: The Challenges of New Media" (Academe, Jan-Feb, 2003), "When new media are added to a course, do our students learn better, more, or differently? … Is there some sort of measurable beneficial outcome from all the time and money invested in introducing technology into a course?" This workshop will address these questions through a specific case study, which can be applied in virtually every disciplinary context. Participants will be challenged to apply the lessons learned to their own campuses and programs and will leave with new perspectives on the assessment of technology's benefits for liberal education.
T. Mills Kelly, Associate Director, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

Presidents Session
Reaching the Nation’s Unprepared Students: What Higher Education Can Do Now
Chair: Barbara Hill, Senior Fellow, AAC&U and Senior Consultant, Pathways to College Network
Panelists: Kati Haycock, Director, The Education Trust; Daniel Fogel, President, University of Vermont

* To view Kati Haycock's slides, please visit
Reaching the Nations Underprepared Students: What Higher Education Can Do Now (Microsoft PowerPoint required)

AIR: A Teaching Tool for Thinking About How to Cultivate Ethical Inquiry
Today’s students are increasingly challenged with addressing ethical concerns in the face of competing demands in the classroom, life, and work. Northeastern University has developed the AIR (Awareness, Investigation, and Responding) model of ethical inquiry to assist faculty and students in meeting these challenges.
Perrin Cohen, NUCASE Director/Professor; and Donna Qualters, Professor/Director of CEUT – both of Northeastern University

A Campus Symposium on Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning
This session will present a three-part symposium series based on AAC&U’s Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College. Using the Greater Expectations report to promote candid dialogue on crucial campus issues, the original series involved over 40 faculty members and administrators in small-group discussions guided by focused questions and selected readings. Handouts available.
Brigadier General David A. Wagie, Dean of the Faculty; Rolf C. Enger, Director of Education; and Barbara June Millis, Director of Faculty Development - all of the United States Air Force Academy
For readings, please see <http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfe/symposium.htm>

Practitioners on Campus: Learning Associates from the "Real World"
How should we connect liberal arts education to the "real world?" This roundtable introduces an innovative practice: “Learning Associates" who bring special expertise to enhance student learning. Novelists, lawyers, farmers, artists, architects, and other "real world" practitioners, with the help of the Mellon Foundation, have joined the faculty at Bates College. Presenters will describe this experiment and lead discussion about using the model at other institutions.
Elizabeth H. Tobin, Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor of History; Pamela J. Baker, Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor of Biology; and Judith H. Robbins, Director, Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities– all of Bates College

Major Curriculum Revision in a Time of Fiscal Constraints
How can faculty and administrators dare to make major curricular revisions when they are in the midst of severe budget shortfalls? Participants will discuss a case study, suggest ways to restructure a curriculum by revising educational delivery systems and support services, and leave with a set of guidelines that they can use to pursue the vision of the Greater Expectations report.
Raymond Joseph Rodrigues, Director of Assessment; Gordon Ross Thompson, Associate Professor of Music; Michael F. Arnush, Associate Professor of Classics; Charles M. Joseph, Dean of the Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs; and Sarah Goodwin, Associate Dean of the Faculty – all of Skidmore College
For more information please see http://www.skidmore.edu/administration/assessment/.

Supporting Recently Tenured Faculty: The Coordinated Plans of Three Colleges
What is good practice in contemporary faculty development? What can we do to support the careers and lives of those who have just earned tenure -- and thereby enhance the future of our institutions? Faculty teams from three colleges spent a year talking together about the status and needs of recently tenured faculty. From research on faculty opinions about professional life to shared and divergent plans, this session reports on the Mellon-sponsored planning of the Central Pennsylvania Consortium
Daniel R. DeNicola, Provost, Gettysburg College; Bruce Pipes, Provost, Franklin & Marshall College; Neil Weissman, Provost, Dickinson College; Martha Arterberry, Assistant Provost, Gettysburg College
For more information please see: http://www.gettysburg.edu/academics/provost/AACU.htm

Virtual Sessions

In an effort to capture some of the creative and innovative work emerging from our member campuses, we created a new feature for the 2004 meeting - “virtual sessions.” The following descriptions promote various projects, models, and research that we believe would be of general interest to the AAC&U audience and others. If you would like to learn more about this work, we have provided links to related websites, when possible, and a contact person, with e-mail address, for each.

Advancing Liberal Education:

Bringing Liberal Education to Women in Saudi Arabia: The Case of Effat College
An examination of Effat College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, will be of interest to those who are looking at global learning, and especially for those interested in the Moslem world, women's education, and how an institution attempts to create a learning-centered education in a culture of rote learning. All education, and especially education for women, has a short history in Saudi Arabia. The first school for girls was established in 1958. University education was started in the late 1960's for men. Higher education was opened to women in the 1970's, and today there are over 40,000 women enrolled. As a new kind of educational institution in Saudi Arabia - one that looks to American women's liberal arts colleges for its models - Effat College must deal with the realities of Islam and Saudi culture, as well as with the demands of the government in curricular issues. In a culture of rote memorization, Effat College is changing the way students learn, transforming higher education for women through interactive teaching, a focus on study skills, the use of internships, and capstone projects. For more information on Effat College please visit http://www.effatcollege.edu.sa/.
Contact: Marcia A. Grant, Founding Dean, Effat College
College / E-mail: grantmarcia@yahoo.com
Dr. Haifa Jamal al-Lail, Dean, Effat College / E-mail: hjamalallail@effatcollege.edu.sa
Ms. Betsy Espe, Vice Dean for Finance and Administration, Effat College / E-mail: bespe@effatcollege.edu.sa
Dr. Azza Mamoud, Academic Vice Dean, Effat College / E-mail: amahmoud@effatcollege.edu.sa
Ms. Kerry Laufer, Director for Quality Control, Effat College / E-mail: klaufer@effatcollege.edu.sa

The Democratization of Advice: Brown's Advising Partnership
Brown University takes a unique approach to advising, an approach that supports a curriculum devoted to student empowerment. Brown envisions advising as freely chosen and participatory guidance rather than one authority figure taking a primary role in determining a student's choices. Our understanding of what it means "to seek advice" conjures a rich and lively association between individuals, where each contributes information and a perspective critical to a worthwhile exchange. As a form of learning central to a liberal arts education, advising should never be passive but rather involve a process of engagement with a variety of others concerning academic choices and personal direction. We believe that Brown's model can bring a great deal to a discussion about how to best prepare our students to be at once self-reliant and deeply collaborative members of society. More information about advising at Brown University is available at http://www.brown.edu/advising.
Contact: Linda Dunleavy, Associate Dean of the College, Brown University
E-mail: Linda_Dunleavy@brown.edu

Developing Leadership for Social Change
The College of Notre Dame of Maryland is primarily a women’s liberal arts college, with a Weekend College for working women and men and a Graduate Studies program. The College offers a Certificate in Leadership and Social Change, which is a cooperative venture between the academic programs and the student services of the college. The primary purpose of the Certificate program is to motivate and prepare graduates for community service and positive social change through experiential learning.
Contact: Patricia Marie McCarron, Assistant Academic Dean/Associate Professor of Education, College of Notre Dame of Maryland / E-mail: pmccarron@ndm.edu

From the Classroom to the Community: Practice and Action in Writing
For students, writing within the academy can be a solitary intellectual process. But four recent curricular projects in Ithaca College's Department of Writing work to counter this isolation by emphasizing not only student writers' own community, but the broader local, national, and even international connections that provide both practical engagement and awareness of social contexts and challenges. The department offers a range of curricular innovations in writing, such as trauma and community-based training, field-based grant-writing, pre-internship instructional support, and an alliance with a poet in exile. Information about Ithaca’s Department of Writing site is at http://www.ithaca.edu/writing/. For more information about the Ithaca City of Asylum, which supports writers whose works are repressed, please see http://www.saltonstall.org/icoa/haven.html
Contact: Patricia B. Spencer, Assistant Professor of Writing, Ithaca College /
E-mail: pspencer@ithaca.edu

The Maya Experience: from New York City Classroom to Guatemala and Beyond
During the Summer of 2003, Yeshiva College offered two linked courses, "Introduction to Anthropology: Maya Civilization," and "Introduction to Tropical Ecology and Ethnobotany." The two courses met for four weeks in New York City, and combined to conclude with a twelve day trip to Guatemala for a group of twenty (including faculty, an administrator, and others). Our goals were many: integrative learning between a social science and natural science; a direct link between classroom learning and experience; linked courses that address the connection between a land and its people; exposure of a primarily East Coast urban student population to the rich culture of Central America; and, for our particular undergraduate population - observant Jewish - the understanding that dietary or religious observance need not restrict experience in the wider world, nor limit a global perspective. We believe that sharing the process can have relevance to other institutions as our colleagues conceptualize and implement their own versions of integrated learning.
Contact: Nada Beth Glick, Director, Academic Advisement Center, Yeshiva University / E-mail: glick@ymail.yu.edu

Civic Engagement:

Service-Learning as Engaged Citizenship: From Theory to Practice and Back Again
The Shriver Center was established in 1993 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in honor of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver. The Center's diverse programs engage the strengths and resources of higher education in finding creative solutions to some of the most troublesome social problems of our times. Through their participation in community-based service initiatives, students explore what it means to become an active and engaged citizen. Through structured reflection and academic coursework in disciplines ranging from English and sociology to dance and engineering, students discover that social issues and problems can be examined and better understood from different disciplinary perspectives. This connection of service to learning allows students to see that their direct service experiences can inform their academic learning, while their learning also informs their service, each transforming the other. Information on The Shriver Center is at http://www.shrivercenter.org/.
Contact: Michele K. Wolff, Director, The Shriver Center, University of Maryland, Baltimore County /
E-mail: wolff@umbc.edu

University of Denver-Bologna University Center for Civic Engagement
The International Center for Civic Engagement in Bologna, Italy, is a partnership of the University of Denver and the University of Bologna. A new initiative – the International Faculty Dialogues on Civic Engagement – took place at the Center in November 2003 with faculty members from the University of Denver, Bologna University, and other universities in Bologna. The Dialogues were designed to encourage better understanding of the local, national, and international context in which each of us struggles to define and act upon our ideas of the university's role in civic engagement and public outreach. The Dialogues will consider how civic engagement meshes with other obligations to provide first-rate teaching and scholarship, as well as the tension between educating student-scholars grounded in disciplinary knowledge and educating students to become public intellectuals grounded in the problems and practices of everyday life. The model should lead to reinvigorated synergies among theoretical work, disciplinary/professional practice, and civic engagement. More information on the center is available at http://www.du.edu/livinglearning/italy.html.

Contact: Sheila Phelan Wright, Exec. Director, Learning Communities/Civic Engagement; Associate Professor, University of Denver / E-mail: shwright@du.edu

Curricula for the 21st Century:

Creating a Service Learning Community at Villanova University: Integrating Liberal Education with Civic Engagement
The Villanova Service Learning Community, a multifaceted living and learning community designed for sophomore students, mirrors the three principles of liberal education—knowledge, justice, and action. It combines a challenging classroom experience, civic engagement in the form of mentoring at-risk students from urban Philadelphia, common residence hall living, and guided reflection on the total experience. Villanova’s Sophomore Service Learning Community is different from other service learning models at the University because it is primarily student-run with administrative and faculty support. The community is run by a team of three student co-chairs and a steering committee responsible for coordinating service trips, community activities, and guided small group reflections. This full-year experience empowers participants through an interdisciplinary curriculum and exposes them to their ethical, social, and civic obligations and responsibilities as educated individuals.
Contact: Edwin Goff, Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Director, University Honors Program; Associate Professor, Philosophy, Villanova University
E-mail: edwin.goff@villanova.edu

Integrating Academic Curriculum with Workplace Experiences: Freshman through Senior Year
DePaul University has an institutional commitment to providing students with substantial learning opportunities outside the classroom. Approximately 80% of incoming freshman cite internships as a key interest area and, in response, DePaul has introduced internship and career development modules into the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years. DePaul's highly successful University-wide Internship Program includes in-class sessions and ongoing online discussions that focus on reflection/awareness, understanding the workplace, and exposure to societal and world challenges as they affect the workplace. Information on DePaul’s University Internship Program is at http://careercenter.depaul.edu/html/gain/Internships/UIPoverview&benefits.html
Contact: Dr. Lynne Copp, Faculty Director, University Internship Program, DePaul University /
E-mail: lcopp@depaul.edu

Diversity and Democracy:

Developing Community Resources For Student Learning: The Urban Life Center
The Urban Life Center in Chicago, linked to over thirty undergraduate institutions through a partnership that includes credit for work done through the Center and tuition sharing, acts as a campus extension for colleges and Universities that do not have easy access to urban resources. In the past year, students contributed more than 20,000 volunteer hours in internships throughout Chicago. The internship sites are most often located in underserved communitites or in organizations that advocate for the underserved. Information about the Urban Life Center is available at http://www.urbanlifecenter.org/
Contact: Scott Elliot Chesebro, Executive Director, Urban Life Center
E-mail: schesebro@aol.com

General Education:

The Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC): Integrative, Interdisciplinary, Global Education
In 1995, Baylor University began an experiment in a new kind of integrated optional core curriculum that is open to two hundred entering students each year. The goals for the curriculum are that it 1) be interdisciplinary; 2) create learning communities; 3) foster active learning; 4) emphasize reading of primary sources; and 5) emphasize writing. The curriculum also examines culture in a global context. A review of the program in the 2000-2001 academic year demonstrated its success. The review included a survey of graduating seniors that compared students who had been through the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core (BIC) and those who had not, with the BIC students registering much higher levels of satisfaction. More information on the BIC is available at http://www3.baylor.edu/BIC/.
Contact: David W. Hendon, Director, Baylor Interdisciplinary Core, Baylor University / E-mail: david_hendon@baylor.edu

Deepening Knowledge and Enhancing Learning Through Electronic Portfolios
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is an urban research university created in 1969 as a partnership by and between Indiana and Purdue Universities that is committed to a liberal education for its students. Recent national reports, including the Greater Expectations National Panel Report, have argued that higher education institutions need to define more clearly, cultivate more intentionally, and assess more effectively the key liberal learning outcomes expected of college graduates. Electronic portfolios are one emerging response to these calls to deepen student learning and to understand more clearly what abilities and skills our students develop as a result of a college education. IUPUI has undertaken two electronic portfolio initiatives: an electronic student portfolio, based on the university's six "Principles of Undergraduate Learning," and an electronic institutional portfolio, intended to demonstrate student achievement at successive levels of aggregation. The institutional portfolio is available at http://www.iport.iupui.edu/; see the "quick links" on the front page of that site to link to a site on the student portfolio.
Contact: Susan Kahn, Director, Institutional Effectiveness, Indiana
University-Purdue University Indianapolis / E-mail: skahn@iupui.edu

Experience, Academics, Inquiry: Engaging Students through Critical Reflection on Global Service-Learning Courses
The Amizade Global Service-Learning Center (http://www.amizade.org/) at the University of Pittsburgh encourages students' academic, civic, and personal development through intercultural exploration and understanding in community-driven service-learning courses. Each course is taught by a university faculty member who integrates academic content into a cross-cultural service experience. The ultimate goal of the center is to promote intercultural exchanges and experiences so people will realize their common humanity and will work for and contribute to peace and justice for all. More information about Amizade is available at http://www.globalservicelearning.org/.
Contact: Eric Michael Hartman, Curriculum Coordinator, Public Service
Faculty, University of Pittsburgh / E-mail: ehartman@amizade.org

Institutional Change:

The City In Transition
In Fall 2002, Emerson College launched "The City In Transition," a three-year thematic initiative that supports curriculum and faculty development efforts, co-curricular student groups, and events and special projects that focus on urban issues, civic engagement, and community-based learning. Emerson College is an urban institution that has recently relocated its main physical plant to the mid-town cultural district of Boston. The central purpose of "The City In Transition" initiative is to advance Emerson's educational mission by providing multiple avenues for engagement and collaboration between the College and its surrounding communities. The initiative can also be seen as a complex experiment in organizational transformation, providing strategies for institutionalizing service learning and promoting curricular reform. More information on "The City in Transition" is available at http://www.emerson.edu/city.
Contact: David Bogen, Executive Director, Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson College / E-mail: david_bogen@emerson.edu

A Framework for Partnered Change: The Sage Colleges in Community Context
The Sage Colleges has an innovative approach to educational leadership that is collaborative at all levels of decision making and among all interactions within and outside the institution. It is based on the belief that collaborative leadership is the most effective method of governance to sustain and support flexible structures necessary to effect a contemporary liberal education agenda. At various stages of development, The Sage model includes close collaboration of Campus Life and Academic Affairs, including a new faculty position located within Campus Life, and close collaboration to the community, including partnerships between the College and area Chambers of Commerce (representing more than 1,100 corporations). The model also includes a newly-created four-year academic structure that acknowledges multiple points of entry and stop-out, in order to meet the needs of today’s students.
Contact: Marion Terenzio, Vice President for Campus Life, The Sage Colleges / E-mail: terenm@sage.edu

Supporting Faculty Work:

Creative Teaching Collaboration
Westminster College is a small private liberal arts college which emphasizes the value of teaching. The college is currently undergoing a multistage process of strategic planning to determine the future direction of the college, which no doubt will reflect a learning centered, intentional institution. Moving from such ideals to developed programs and then on to implementation, most institutions face several challenges, such as the determining the efficient use of resources, encouraging campus-wide dialogs, and gaining faculty buy in. Westminster College has developed the "Creative Teaching Collaboration," created as an ongoing forum for discussions across campus so that colleagues in different areas of campus could communicate with each other and help facilitate the new plan. Participants meet twice a month and discuss issues of interest to faculty, lessons learned from collaborative projects, techniques for active student learning, new approaches to teaching, and challenges in their courses. They have also created a Web CT site with bulletin boards and archives so the entire campus can participate in the process regardless of their ability to attend the meetings.
Contact: Georgia Kenyon White, Professor of Marketing, Westminster College
E-mail: gwhite@westminstercollege.edu

From Best Practices to Actual Teaching: Faculty Development for Enhanced Learning in Online Discussions
Guiding all faculty development initiatives is the overarching idea that programs geared toward increasing the effectiveness of teaching must lead to enhanced learning. At the University of New Hampshire, the Academic Program in College Teaching aims to achieve this goal with three constituencies: tenure-track faculty, adjunct faculty, and graduate and postdoctoral students who are interested in faculty careers. UNH's formula for success has been to use as a lens on our teaching practice the research and scholarship, which under gird the "best practices" of college teaching. UNH has is now taking that research and scholarship into the electronic learning environment and using them to design courses that lead to an online graduate certificate in college teaching. These courses expose faculty and future faculty to the scholarship of teaching, but they do so in a practical context that permits hands-on experience of the practices that have arisen from that scholarship. This increases the likelihood that college teaching theory will be embedded in the course designs and classroom interactions that constitute the core of the undergraduate experience. We expect learning outcomes that are consistent with a robust and productive community of active learners. For information about the Online Graduate Certificate in College Teaching, please visit www.unh.edu/teaching-excellence.
Contact: Michael Lee, Associate Director, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of New Hampshire / E-mail: mjl@cisunix.unh.edu

Women in Higher Education:

Supporting Women in Higher Education: Developing Leaders for the Future
Where are we in advancing women into leadership roles in the "liberal university" of the 21st century? Women presidents of universities and colleges in the United States increased from five percent in 1975 to twenty percent in 1998 (American Council on Education, 2001). These women have taken uphill journeys that have been mostly uncharted. Their voices needed to be recorded and studied to document their accomplishments, understand their leadership styles, chronicle their leadership development, and create a model for other women who aspire to leadership in higher education. Anne Hicks-Coolick and Mary Lou Frank of Kennesaw State University, in collaboration with Georgia Public Television, are currently producing a documentary on female college and university presidents entitled "Leadership, Vision, and Excellence: A Study of Women Presidents in Higher Education." For more information on this project, contact Mary Lou Frank (information below). For more information on the report cited above and activities of ACE’s Office of Women in Higher Education, see http://www.acenet.edu/programs/owhe/home.cfm
Contact: Mary Lou Frank, Dean, of Undergraduate & University Studies; Professor of Psychology, Kennesaw State University / E-mail: mlfrank@kennesaw.edu

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