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Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility - The conference will feature new research—based on survey responses from 24,000 students and 9,000 campus professionals at twenty-three colleges and universities—on the availability of learning opportunities for social and personal responsibility. The research revealed that, although there was overwhelming consensus that education for personal and social responsibilities should be a goal of a college education, far fewer respondents strongly agreed that their institutions had opportunities for such learning. This is a troubling gap between aspiration and reality—and one this conference will address. As stated by Anne Colby and William Sullivan (both of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) in an article they cowrote for the winter 2009 issue of AAC&U's Liberal Education: “The relative lack of institutional investment in students’ personal and social responsibility reflects the widespread assumption that academic content knowledge and the intellectual skill of analytic or critical thinking…are the overriding aims of higher education and that the development of personal and social responsibility is only distantly connected with those aims. …[W]e take issue with both of these assumptions, arguing that colleges should aim to teach students how to use knowledge and criticism not only as ends in themselves but also as means toward responsible engagement with the life of their times.” Sessions will include: A keynote address by Anne Colby on “Character and Competence: Realigning the Core Commitments of Higher Education.” Perspective-Taking: The Doorway to Civic and Moral Development Creating a Culture of Integrity on Campus Education and Acting Well: Reflection, Judgment, Courage The conference also features six premeeting workshops and more than sixty presentations describing best practices and campus models—half of which focus on assessing personal and social responsibility outcomes. You can learn more about the conference highlights and workshops online. For more information, please call 202.387.3760 or write to network@aacu.org. Data were gathered using a new campus climate survey, the Personal and Social Responsibility Inventory, by Eric L. Dey and Associates at the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, in conjunction with AAC&U. A new AAC&U research report—“Civic Responsibility: What is the Campus Climate for Learning”—will be released in October at this meeting. Please share this information with your colleagues who may be interested in attending the conference. |
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2009-2010 Network for Academic Renewal Conferences Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities General Education and Assessment: Maintaining Momentum, Achieving New Priorities Faculty Roles in High-Impact Practices |
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Questions about any of AAC&U's meetings? E-mail meetings@aacu.org. |
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Call for Proposals - General Education and Assessment: Maintaining Momentum, Achieving New Priorities February 18-20, 2010 AAC&U's Network for Academic Renewal invites proposals that highlight fresh thinking and new approaches to help faculty, staff, and administrators maintain momentum in general education and assessment and reaffirm a commitment to educational quality amid mounting economic pressures and budget cuts. Administrators, student affairs educators, and faculty, especially now, must work together to ensure that general education is more than an accumulated set of credits and that assessment practices both demonstrate accomplishment and deepen achievement. At a time when many campuses are scaling back to focus on "essentials," the essential role of general education and assessment cannot be overlooked. This conference reaffirms a commitment to engaged liberal education as the guiding principle for campus action. The conference will draw on AAC&U's long-standing projects and publications on general education reform including work to bring diversity, global, and civic learning into general education and models for advancing scientific and quantitative literacy through real-world curricula and problem-based pedagogies. Submit your proposal online by filling in each field of the submission form as directed. For more information, please call 202.387.3760 or write to network@aacu.org. We look forward to reading your proposals. |
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Questions about any of AAC&U's meetings? Email meetings@aacu.org. To unsubscribe from AAC&U Calls for Proposals and Meeting Announcements, click here. |
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Association of American Colleges & Universities |