LIBERAL EDUCATION, SUmmer/Fall 2011 Issue

Liberal Education, Summer/Fall 2011, Vol. 97, No. 3/4
Global Positioning: Essential Learning, Student Success, and the Currency of US Degrees

This issue of Liberal Education presents highlights of the 2011 AAC&U annual meeting, “Global Positioning: Essential Learning, Student Success, and the Currency of US Degrees.” Also included are articles on broadening involvement in undergraduate writing instruction, fostering faculty agency, and using mathematics inquiry for non-STEM majors.

Please feel free to pass this e-mail along to others. The table of contents is below. If you would like to order multiple copies for a faculty workshop or campus office, we offer bulk discounts for purchases of eleven or more copies.

2012 AAC&U Annual Meeting—Highlights of AAC&U's 2012 Annual Meeting program—SHARED FUTURES / DIFFICULT CHOICES: Reclaiming a Democratic Vision for College Learning, Global Engagement, and Success—are now online. Registration is also available online. Register by December 16 for reduced meeting rates. The meeting will be held January 25–28, 2012, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC.

President's Message

Deepening the Connections: Liberal Education and Global Learning
By Carol Geary Schneider
Higher education today is simultaneously experiencing a crisis of confidence and an explosion of innovation. Both situations create opportunities to rethink and remap students' educational pathways through college, using global learning as an integrative theme.

From the Editor

News and Information

Featured Topic

It Ain’t What You Do, It’s How You Do It: Global Education for Gender Justice
By Kavita N. Ramdas
At a moment in history when we have no choice but to consider the world as a whole as the only appropriate unit of analysis, education alone offers real hope of meeting and overcoming the global challenges we face.

Preparing Students for Ethical Complexity at the Intersection Where Worlds Collide: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community
By Walter Fluker
Ethical leaders come into being through the development of character, civility, and a sense of community. This triune of virtues, values, and virtuosities is the bedrock for genuine human development, productivity, and peaceful coexistence.

“I Aim at Being Useful”: How Useful Have We Been? What More Must We Do?
By Catharine R. Stimpson
Because of the work of the Program on the Status and Education of Women, its friends, and its partners, there is more justice in education today and more justice through education.

Learning How to Learn: Metacognition in Liberal Education
By John Ottenhoff
Participants in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest–Teagle Collegium on Student Learning examined recent work in the cognitive sciences, tested the theories through classroom interventions and experiments, and sought to improve student learning through the application of metacognitive practices.

How Colleges Can Influence the Development of a Global Perspective
By Larry A. Braskamp and Mark E. Engberg
What environmental conditions—curricular and cocurricular activities as well as the ethos of a campus community—are catalysts for spurring students’ global learning and development? And in what ways can educators intentionally structure campus environments and learning opportunities to help students integrate multiple dimensions of self?

Perspectives

Leaving Western Civ Behind
By William H. McNeill
An esteemed historian surveys his lifelong effort to understand human history by examining his own reception, alteration, and elaboration of the worldviews proffered by influential teachers.

The Duke Reader Project: Engaging the University Community in Undergraduate Writing Instruction
By Cary Moskovitz
Duke University is experimenting with a new approach to writing in the disciplines that matches undergraduates with alumni and employee volunteers who serve as members of the target audience for particular writing assignments.

Assuming Agency: The Power of Strategy and Networks in the Professional Lives of Faculty
By Aimee LaPointe Terosky and KerryAnn O’Meara
Case-study data of hundreds of faculty members in various institutional types and career stages reveal that faculty can assume agency in their professional lives—and, thereby, improve their well-being and the quality of their work environment—through strategic career management efforts and the development of relationships and networks.

My View

Should Liberal Arts Math Courses Be Taught through Mathematics Inquiry?
By Carmen Latterell
The bottom line about liberal arts math courses for the non-STEM major is that these majors really do not need to know mathematics content for their future, but mathematical processes offer an opportunity that is essential for their future.

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