Pre-Conference Workshops

Wednesday, January 26, 2:00-5:00 p.m.
Separate registration and fee for AAC&U and ACAD workshops

The Art and Science of Assessing General Education
AAC&U’s 2002 publication, Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College, calls for higher levels of coherence, transparency, and quality in undergraduate education. To serve that vision, assessment must be as ambitious and sophisticated as the complex intellectual capacities we seek to assess. That means addressing learning over time and across multiple courses; combining technical rigor with expert human judgment; using findings in powerful ways; and communicating with a wide range of audiences. This workshop provides guidance on principles of good assessment practice, supplemented by a hands-on exercise and a case study.
BARBARA WRIGHT, Assessment Coordinator, Eastern Connecticut State University

The Challenge of Change: Integrating Academic Planning and Strategic Planning
Strategic planning aims to integrate activities throughout a campus to meet challenges, take advantage of new opportunities, and pursue a dynamic future. Observers note that the academic plans for the institution are too often not as fully articulated as they should be to generate full institutional support. This workshop provides examples from many campuses that have anchored continuous academic planning in the institutional change effort and their techniques to realign resources to support innovation.
ANN FERREN, Professor of Educational Studies, Radford University; Senior Fellow, AAC&U; and co-author of Leadership through Collaboration: The Role of the Chief Academic Officer (Greenwood, 2004).

Academic and Student Affairs Partnerships Focused on Student Learning: From Theory to Practice
Recent calls for enhancing student learning have highlighted the value of campus partnerships between academic and student affairs leaders. The focus on transformative student learning invites us to explore how we can promote and create successful collaborations at our colleges and universities. What changes in our approaches to student learning, do we want to address? What conditions foster such changes? How would new campus alliances benefit students, faculty, and staff? Participants will explore these questions and others by using case studies and applying key theoretical constructs to this process of change. Finally, participants will have the opportunity to develop some possible strategies for their campuses.
MARY BOYCE, Provost, Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles; SUE BORREGO, Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; and CYNTHIA FORREST, Dean of Student Services, Emeritus, Framingham State College

Educational Encounters in the Intersection: Student Intellectual, Intercultural, and Identity Development
Research literature is rich in the areas of student intellectual and identity development, with significant research emerging in the area of intercultural sensitivity. This workshop will explore recent research on the intersections of these three areas of student development— intellectual, identity formation, and intercultural sensitivity. It will include the assessment measures used in the study of "the multicultural self.,” and will help participants adapt the measures in order to study the influence of diversity on students’ development on their own campuses. Discussion will also focus on curricular and pedagogical transformation and working in a more seamless manner with the curriculum and co-curriculum.
L. LEE KNEFELKAMP, Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Promoting Student Success: Lessons from Educationally Effective Colleges and Universities
This workshop highlights key findings from the Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP) project, an in-depth study of twenty institutions that engage students in effective educational practices and have better-than-predicted graduation rates. Promising practices that exemplify what really matters to student success will be shared. Key individuals from several DEEP institutions will discuss how their schools reached this level of performance and how they keep the flame of innovation burning. Time will then be devoted to having participants discuss issues and challenges to becoming a more student-success friendly, learning rich campus.
GEORGE KUH, Chancellor's Professor and Director, Center for Postsecondary Research; and JILLIAN KINZIE, Associate Director, NSSE Institute for Effective Educational Practice – both at Indiana University

ACAD Workshop: Seasons of a Dean's Life
The workshop will focus on the changing expectations, dilemmas, and challenges that deans face as they move through their administrative careers. A panel will include deans who represent different career stages and who will serve as resources as workshop participants consider these "seasons of a dean's life." The workshop is intended to be valuable to Deans as well as Associate Deans.
Michele Dominy, Dean of the College, Bard College; Gorden Hedahl, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Wisconsin, River Falls; Mary E. Morton, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Dayton; and Elizabeth Boylan, Provost and Dean of the Faculty, Barnard College; Philip Glotzbach, President of Skidmore College

ACAD Workshop: Developing International Partnerships
This workshop builds on a successful ACAD workshop held in Washington, D.C. in June of 2004. As increased emphasis is being placed on educating more global citizens throughout U.S. education, including higher education, the greater the need for academic administrators and institutions to understand why and how these goals might be achieved on the home campus. In addition to models of international education for academic administrators being presented, the multi-faceted role of deans and chief academic officers in advancing international education for students and faculty will be examined. Specifically, the workshop will address four strands: 1) students; 2) faculty; 3) institutions/administrators; and 4) funding. Each strand will focus on the role of the dean in developing, implementing, and promulgating programs focused on students/faculty/administrators. The desirability of administrators becoming global citizens will also be explored.
Vera Zradvrakovich, Vice President for Instruction, Prince George’s Community College; Russ Meyer, Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Colorado State University-Pueblo; Ken Lee, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

Also offered on Wednesday, January 26, 2:00-5:00 p.m.

Grants Workshop sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities
This NEH workshop is designed for college and university faculty and administrators interested in strengthening and improving their humanities programs. Workshop activities will focus on those grant opportunities of greatest interest to college humanities faculty and administrators. The workshop will include a review of NEH funding opportunities and simulated panel reviews of NEH proposals. Participants are encouraged to bring their ideas for campus humanities initiatives to discuss at the workshop itself and in follow-up meetings throughout the conference. Participants are encouraged to familiarize themselves with NEH funding opportunities by consulting the NEH Web site prior to the workshop (www.neh.gov).

There is no registration fee for the NEH Workshop, but prior registration is required to ensure a space. Please send an email to hyers@aacu.org if you would like to attend.

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If you have questions, please e-mail us at meetings@aacu.org.