Development of report-writing and other communication skills in adult education is encouraged and supported by employers. Local employer input to the adult education program at Delaware Technical and Community College has provided specific recommendations for curriculum development and faculty orientation to student and employer needs. (MSE)

The present crisis of careerism versus liberal arts is a blessing in disguise, forcing humanities faculty to adjust their teaching and thinking to basic questions of value and use. They will have to demonstrate to students that the humanities provide profoundly useful, life-enhancing skills that one has a responsibility to develop. (Author/MSE)

Piaget's theories of cognitive development are applied to the college student and suggestions are given for helping students at different developmental stages. It is proposed that teachers provide experiences that promote cognitive conflict as a means of moving students into new stages. (MSE)

The apathy and negative attitudes of faculty advisors toward the academically underprepared student are often more crippling than the students' disabilities. The remedy is faculty commitment, service, and an unselfish dedication to the ideal of equal access to higher education. (Author/MSE)

The argument that liberal education leads people to substitute intellectual tolerance or ambiguity for righteous indignation is criticized, with reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe's portrayal of Thomas Jefferson, his liberalism, and democratic manners. (MSE)

A program offered by the University of Virginia French department to instruct new teaching assistants (TAs) in language methods is described. The program includes a presemester workshop, in-semester practicum, and observation procedure and coordinates with the students' advanced courses and research. (Author/MSE)

A restructured core curriculum at Saint Anselm College includes an interdisciplinary humanities program incorporating a required foreign language sequence. Introductory courses use native speakers in weekly informal conversation sessions to prepare students for a later required culture and civilization course taught in the foreign language. (MSE)

The trend toward incorporating traditional social sciences materials into foreign language coursework, in order to increase enrollment, is explained and discussed. Controversy centers on trading aesthetic appreciations of foreign literature for course content on social and cultural issues. (MSE)

A survey of West Virginia institutions examined the issue of student selection for basic skills programs and resulted in development of a formalized evaluation and placement process. The procedures are outlined and a flow chart provided. (MSE)

Teachers of interdisciplinary courses with backgrounds in the humanities should exploit criticisms of bias toward the humanities rather than deny or avoid them, and promote discussion of the issues. Admitting bias is more honest than professing to have information without opinions. (Author/MSE)

Specific teaching practices are suggested to help teachers achieve better relationships with students, clarify expectations, and minimize grade appeals. They include statement of standards, commitment to enforcing them, clarifying the grading method, concrete responses to student questions about grading, quantifying all grades, keeping good…

A symposium is described that provided instruction in research methodology to 12 college faculty members and required each to undertake a research project for instructional improvement. The symposium's content and format are outlined, and the results of the efforts are briefly noted. (MSE)

A humanist describes his reaction to instruction in research methodology, and specifically statistical measurement, from initial discomfort, through confusion, to reassessment and reinforcement of his own assumptions and instructional intentions. The experience in specifying outcomes helped enhance his intuition about teaching. (MSE)

A faculty member's research project to determine the effectiveness of an Arabic language component in a course on Islam is described. The construction of the course with an experimental model and problems in measurement of results are outlined. (MSE)

A faculty member's experiment to test the hypothesis that choice of an academic major is related to a student's ease in written and aural skills in a foreign language is described. Majors were given values according to their aural or analytical characteristics, and correlated with achievement. No significant relationship was found. (MSE)