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Annual Meeting 2005

Plenary Sessions

Barbara Lawton Roberts T. Jones

Opening Plenary
Thursday, January 26, 8:45-10:15 am

Barbara Lawton and Roberts T. Jones
Meeting New Challenges at Home and Abroad: Liberal Education’s New Premium
The global economy is changing. The world is becoming more interdependent. The challenges Americans face both at home and abroad demand new levels of engagement, commitment, and creative problem-solving. In this turbulent age, an empowering liberal education has become more important—for all students—than ever before. Responding to these far-reaching changes, AAC&U has launched Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) to connect the public dialogue about college with these societal and economic shifts, and to make the aims and practices of a 21st century liberal education central to the compact between the academy and society. In this opening session, Wisconsin Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton and Roberts T. Jones, President of Education and Workforce Policy, LLC—both members of the LEAP National Leadership Council—will explore these issues from the perspectives of employers, citizens, and policymakers. They will also address the connected challenges of making excellence inclusive while also raising expectations for all students’ preparation and achievement.

Azar Nafisi  

Closing Plenary
Saturday, January 29, 10:45-11:30 a.m.

Azar Nafisi
Liberal Education and the Republic of the Imagination

Azar Nafisi is author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. Reading Lolita in Tehran has won diverse literary awards, including AAC&U’s Frederic W. Ness Book Award for 2004. Azar Nafisi is a Visiting Professor and director of the SAIS Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. She taught at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai before her return to the United States in 1997 — earning national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran's intellectuals, youth and especially young women. She is currently working on two books, one tentatively titled The Republic of the Imagination, which is about the power of literature to liberate minds and peoples, and the other, The Pursuit of Happiness, about culture, history, and loss.

 

W. Robert Connor  

ACAD Keynote Luncheon
Friday, January 29, 11:45-1:15 p.m.

W. Robert Connor
Valuing our Values: Taking Liberal Education to the Next Level
W. Robert Connor is President of the Teagle Foundation, which places a special emphasis on seeing that today’s students have a challenging, wide ranging and enriching college education, best achieved when colleges develop broad and intellectually stimulating curricula, engage their students in active learning, set clear goals, and systematically measure progress toward those goals. Prior to joining the Teagle Foundation, Dr. Connor was President and Director of National Humanities Center in North Carolina, an independent center for advanced study in literature, history, philosophy, and all other humanistic fields. He retired from Princeton University in 1989 as the Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics. W. Robert Connor is the author of many scholarly works, including: Greek Orations (University of Michigan Press, 1996); Theopompus and Fifth Century Athens (Harvard Press for the Center of Hellenic Studies, 1968); The New Politicians of Fifth Century Athens (Princeton University Press, 1971); and, Thucydides (Princeton University Press, 1984).


Sue Rosser  

Networking Breakfast for Women Faculty and Administrators
Thursday, January 26, 7:00-8:30 a.m.

Sue V. Rosser
Demanding Excellence in the Sciences: Women Scientists Struggling to Succeed
Nationally known science scholar and educational reformer, Sue V. Rosser chronicles how excellence is undermined in the sciences when women scientists are not full and equal participants in shaping the intellectual contours, culture, and pedagogies of academic science. Drawing from her book, The Science Glass Ceiling, Rosser charts the difficulties and double standards many women scientists face, but offers practical remedies as the first woman Dean at a science/technical school, the Georgia Institute of Technology.


Ronald A. Crutcher  

Networking Breakfast for Faculty and Administrators of Color
Friday, January 27, 7:00 a.m.

Ronald A. Crutcher
Spiraling Through the Glass Ceiling
Ronald A. Crutcher is President of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Prior to joining Wheaton in 2004, President Crutcher was Provost, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Professor of Music at Miami University, and he currently serves as Chair of AAC&U’s Board of Directors. President Crutcher is also a member of the Klemperer Trio, which performs regularly in this country and Europe. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in March 1985 and, in 1979, was the first cellist to receive the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale.

FEATURED SESSIONS


Friday, January 27, 2:45 - 4:00 pm

Why Read: Can Great Books Change People’s Lives?
In Why Read?, Mark Edmundson dramatizes what the recent identity crisis of the humanities has effectively obscured: that reading can change your life for the better. His Harper's Magazine article "On the Uses of the Liberal Arts" is reported to be the most photocopied essay on college campuses over the last five years. Ruminating on his essay and the intense reaction to it, Mark Edmundson exposes universities' ever-growing consumerism at the expense of a challenging, life-altering liberal arts education. He encourages educators to teach students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better, arguing that questions about the uses of literature—what would it mean to live out of this book, to see it as a guide to life—are the central questions to ask in a literary education.

MARK EDMUNDSON is the Daniels Family Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia. His is the author of Why Read? (Bloombury Publishing, 2004) and Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference (Random House, 2002)

Thursday, January 26, 1:30 - 2:30 pm

The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent
In The Flight of the Creative Class, the follow-up to The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida paints a picture of a global giant on the verge of one of the toughest economic battles of its life. To stay at the cutting edge, the United States will have to find ways to mitigate gross inequality, harness the creativity of all human beings, take on political polarization, retain the traditional openness of American society to international influence, and revamp K-12 and post-secondary education. Beyond just the U.S., Florida looks at how regions and nations around the world are adapting to the global creative economy. By weaving together such issues, he asks every business, political, and cultural leader to reevaluate the world from an alternate perspective.

RICHARD FLORIDAis the Hirst Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent (HarperBusiness, 2005).

Friday, January 27, 10:30 to 11:45 am

Mapping the Future of Inclusion and Excellence
Given the rapid changes we are experiencing in the economy, in the U.S. college-going population, and in global geopolitics, scholars have argued that diversity, as a component of academic excellence, is essential to higher education’s continuing relevance in the twenty-first century. At the same time, our “post-Michigan” educational environment calls for campuses to connect their educational quality and inclusion efforts more fundamentally and comprehensively than ever before. Join our speakers as they discuss this next generation of diversity and excellence work: What will it look like? How will both our thinking and our actions need to shift? Who will need to be involved? How will we know we are accomplishing our goals?

MODERATOR: L. LEE KNEFELKAMP, Professor of Psychology and Education, Senior Scholar, AAC&U
PANELISTS: ALMA CLAYTON-PEDERSEN, Vice President, Office of Education and Institutional Renewal, AAC&U; CARYN MCTIGHE MUSIL, Senior Vice President and Vice President, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Global Initiatives, AAC&U; and JEFFERY MILEM, Associate Professor, Department of Education Policy and Leadership, University of Maryland

Thursday, January 26, 8:45 - 10:15 am

Collaborating for Excellence: Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, and the Challenge of Transformative Learning
Intentional partnerships between Student Affairs and Academic Affairs can create more comprehensive learning experiences than occur in either sphere separately. Because transformative learning always happens in the context of students’ lives, collaborative campuses can serve as laboratories for helping students develop the knowledge, skills, and values they need to fully contribute to society. The result is a deeper, more engaged, more integrated educational experience. Drawing upon a decade of experiences at California State University, Monterey Bay—a campus distinguished by cross-institutional partnerships and cooperative arrangements—this session will explore a variety of ways to create partnerships that support student learning and success and that maximize the whole learning community.

SUSAN E. BORREGO, Vice President Student Affairs, and MARSHA MOROH, Interim Provost—both of California State University Monterey Bay; and CYNTHIA FORREST, Dean of Students Emeriti, Framingham State College

Friday, January 27, 1:30 - 2:30 pm

From Athens and Berlin to L. A.: Faculty Work in the New Academy
The faculty role in American colleges and universities has been profoundly shaped by visions of excellence emerging from ancient Athens and late 19th century Berlin. We are still living with the power and persuasiveness of variations on the teacher/scholar theme framed by that rich legacy; for Max Weber, the moral obligation of the teacher is to “ask inconvenient questions” of a privileged elite. The new academy is asking much more—under radically different conditions—and is even suggesting that the faculty role be “unbundled.” If L.A. is more our future—with its diversity, size, global perspective, technical base, and market priorities—new, more capacious visions of scholarly excellence will be required. What will the work of faculty look like and what will be its attractions and rewards?

R. EUGENE RICE, Senior Scholar, AAC&U, and Senior Scholar, Program in Leadership and Change, Antioch University

Saturday, January 28, 9:15 - 10:30 am

Liberal Education Outcomes: A Preliminary Report on Student Achievement in College
This session will introduce AAC&U's new report, Liberal Education Outcomes: A Preliminary Report of Student Achievement in College, a thought-provoking publication prepared for the recently launched campaign, Liberal Education and America's Promise: Excellence as a National Goes to College. Presenters will discuss what campuses need to do next to assess and improve student learning. The session will also address how campuses can use the report to generate appropriate dialogue about assessment and accountability on campus and among external constituents, such as parents, state legislators and accreditors.

JUDITH EATON, President of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, ROSS MILLER, Director of Programs, Office of Education and Quality Initiatives, AAC&U; RONALDO WILLIAMS, President, Prince George’s Community College; and ELISABETH ZINSER, President, Southern Oregon University

Thursday, January 26, 4:15 - 5:45 pm

Advancing Sustainability in Curriculum, Research, Campus Operations, and the Community
Sustainability is an important focus of teaching, research, operations and outreach at hundreds of colleges and universities worldwide. Panel members will describe how specific higher education institutions are graduating students who are engaged in creating healthier communities, ecosystems, and stronger economies. Discussion will focus on having sustainability become a significant focus of the curriculum—general education, all majors, diversity, global learning, and civic engagement—as well as in operations, planning, student life, and community partnerships.

JEAN-LOU CHAMEAU, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, Georgia Institute of Technology; TERRY LINK, Director, Office of Campus Sustainability, Michigan State University; ROBERT KOESTER, Professor of Architecture and Director of the Center for Energy Research, Education and Service, Ball State University; and ANTHONY D. CORTESE, President, Second Nature, and Co-Founder, Education for Sustainability Western Network

Thursday, January 26, 2:45 - 4:00 pm

The Challenge of Bologna
The "Bologna Process" represents an effort to create a European Higher Education Area with common parameters for bachelor's and master's degrees, a modular transfer credit system (ECTS) and diploma supplement to accompany them, and a transnational accountability framework that seeks evidence of the effectiveness of reforms in the employability of graduates. As the mobility of students accelerates worldwide, what are the implications of the "Bologna Process" for Higher Education in the United States generally, and liberal education outcomes specifically?

CLIFFORD ADELMAN, Senior Research Analyst, United States Department of Education


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

 

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