AAC&U joined ACE and other higher education organizations in a letter to Congress supporting the FUTURE Act, which would permanently fund Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other Minority-Serving Institutions. It would also simplify FAFSA and loan repayment paperwork. The legislation has passed both the Senate and House.

This webinar will bring together key institutional leaders, funding agency officers, and professional society representatives for an open and frank discussion of the structural and systemic barriers to quality and equity in undergraduate STEM education. Free for all who wish to participate, it will be held December 11 at 2:00 p.m. (ET).

A Comprehensive Approach to Assessment of High-Impact Practices, written by Ashley Finley and co-released with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), outlines a process of effectively assessing high-impact practices—such as learning communities, capstones, undergraduate research, and community-based experiences—at your institution.

AAC&U has announced the winner of its Frederic W. Ness Book Award, Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order. The annual award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the understanding and improvement of liberal education, will be presented to author Joy Ann Williamson-Lott at AAC&U’s annual meeting.

On October 30, AAC&U will host a webinar discussion on “The Emerging Landscape of Learning: A Review of Five Years of AAC&U’s VALUE Initiative.” Free for AAC&U members, this webinar will showcase results generated by the national—now multinational—Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) initiative, and presenters will help participants think through its methodological, pedagogical, and practical implications.

Through a grant from The Endeavor Foundation, AAC&U will sponsor two regional institutes for faculty teams seeking to embed civic learning across the structure, concepts, and pedagogies of undergraduate majors. The first institute will be held on January 31, 2020, in Los Angeles, and the second on March 6, 2020, in Washington, DC.

AAC&U and several other organizations have joined a statement by the American Association of University Professors urging the US Department of Education to step away from the dangerous path it entered by ordering the Duke–UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies to revise its offerings or lose federal funding. “This marks a chillingly inappropriate political intrusion into curricular decisions best made by faculty and poses a significant threat to academic freedom,” the statement said.