Growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s, the author learned about inequality and slavery, about how the poor were treated, and about the role played by skin color in dividing the haves from the have-nots. She also learned about separate and unequal schools and how privileged whites received a better education. From the very beginning, the United…

At a time when collaborative leadership is much heralded in American institutional life as the antidote to discontent with power structures, colleges and universities have illustrated that shared governance is not inherently collaborative. The sense of common cause on campus should come from a shared knowledge base, concern with external…

An ongoing project to measure faculty work at the University of Southern California exemplifies the collaborative approach to producing an assessment instrument that documents both an individual's productivity in research, teaching, and service and determines the worth of his activities in relation to institutional goals. The resulting Faculty…

Chronicles the process of reforming the liberal education program at Franklin Pierce College (New Hampshire), organized around the theme of the individual and community. Discusses objectives in integrating the "civic arts" into the core curriculum and challenges encountered in balancing "individual" and "community" within it. (MSE)

Describes the development and design of the "master learners" program at Fort Lewis College (Colorado), in which faculty members from varied teaching backgrounds are given release time to participate as students in a year-long Human Heritage course to show freshmen how a master learns. The program has evolved into an exemplary faculty development…

Creating a college culture that encourages cultural pluralism requires removal of barriers in the environment. Colleges must (1) not assume that students need to assimilate into their existing culture; (2) extend their geographic and social boundaries; (3) provide support systems; and (4) help faculty understand different culture-based student…

The individual element of multicultural education needs to be recognized. The Association of American Colleges' national project, "Engaging Cultural Legacies: Shaping Core Curricula in the Humanities," helps colleges develop curriculum that challenge students to explore the humanities as reflected in their own social values, ideas, and…

The past is the substance from which the present is formed, but college curricula based on this cultural heritage need not exclude the present. Major classical writers and social thinkers must be central to it but should be accompanied by critical engagement with living texts from powerful and active minds. (MSE)

Higher education can resist the need to open the U.S. mind to greater cultural diversity by ignoring the changing ethnic composition of student bodies and larger society, or realize this opportunity to revitalize the social sciences and humanities with a new sense of purpose and more inclusive definition of knowledge. (MSE)

The future of pluralistic democracies depends not only on laws but on individuals within the societies. Different cultures bring different strengths and conceptions of self and community. By studying different cultures and discovering shared virtues, students can identify those contributing to high quality of life for human society. (MSE)

Becoming an anthropologist illustrates on a large scale how valuable examining other cultures is. Anthropology should be incorporated into the college liberal arts curriculum to help eliminate the ethnocentrism of educated people in our own society but should focus on great civilizations nearly matching ours in complexity, historical depth, and…

Developments in humanities scholarship are moving in surprisingly congruent directions. Far from competing with proper attention to pedagogy, they provide solid bases for curricular coherence and teaching effectiveness. New integrative themes crossing disciplinary lines in humanities, focusing here on history, can help fulfill several humanities…

If higher education is to have a coherent curriculum and a coherent way of thinking about the world, it may need to study premodern ways of thinking for both insights and the courage to think in new ways. The tradition of the humanities, which originated in fifteenth-century Italy, can help. (MSE)

The college liberal arts curriculum should help disengage students from their own cultural perspectives so they can more adequately think and argue about the past. Similarly, in studying how literary texts represent cultures, students need not "know" the culture but simply understand the statement they make. (MSE)

The ethos of a college or university is a belief system widely shared by faculty, students, administrators, and others. Colleges with an ethos of learning share three themes: (1) a holistic institutional philosophy of learning; (2) an involving campus culture; and (3) a climate encouraging free expression. A learning ethos must be cultivated…