Student-led rallies and protests continue to gain attention nationwide, due in part to the use of social media. Debates over free speech, acts of protest during the national anthem, and mascot choices or building names reflecting racist histories all illustrate the tensions present on many college campuses. Lack of faculty and staff expertise in…

The variety of efforts made by several hundred small liberal arts colleges in the areas of classroom instruction, individual student supervision, academic advising, and orientation programs to foster a context in which student-faculty interaction becomes more likely is examined. (MSE)

It is the responsibility of faculty as a group to preserve academic freedom by recognizing, acknowledging, and withstanding the pressures against it at every level of the academic enterprise. (MSE)

Aspects of the small liberal arts college's environment that contribute to the intellectual and personal development of faculty as well as students include accessibility, visibility, flexibility, the institution's desire for interdisciplinary inquiry, and a reward system for scholarship. (MSE)

A survey of faculty in seven western New York State colleges with Catholic traditions revealed certain teacher characteristics and attitudes: high morale, high teaching loads and scholarly activity, basically secular attitudes, and geographic provinciality. (MSE)

A college's ethos, based on the perceptions of the institution's character from both faculty and students, may provide a basis for decisions necessary for a college's survival in the next decade. Survey results show colleges most likely to survive balance self-awareness, empathetic responsiveness, internal coherence, resilience, and autonomous…

Relationships between college faculty and administrators are at a crossroads; administrators want more efficient institutional functioning, and faculty want more resources and protection from external interference. However, quality and efficiency are not antithetical, and faculty and administrators can develop both, cooperatively, by focusing on…

The spotlight on higher education has never been more intense than during the 1980s. Two central themes for response are the need to create greater campus community and cohesiveness and the need to tilt against rampant vocationalism and restore the liberal arts to the place of primacy in undergraduate education. (MLW)

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…

Faculty and administrators committed to the goals of reflective thinking should establish closer relationships with student affairs staff, both to explore a richer definition of the outcomes and means of learning and to make better use of students' out-of-class experiences as an intentional tool for reflection and learning. (MSE)

Intellectual community in liberal arts colleges will come to life to the extent that educators take seriously the fundamental genius of colleges to connect knowledge with knowledge and learning with living. Liberal learning and its purposes must be central to faculty lives as teachers and stewards of their institutions. (MSE)

When students and professors share their work, viewing each other as scholars capable of pursuing edifying research and teachers interested in invigorating classrooms, a vital intellectual community is formed. Small liberal arts colleges must refrain from forcing a generation of teacher-scholars to choose between these two identities. (MSE)

Liberal arts faculty are frustrated by growing and competing professional demands. Promoting the intellectual life of liberal arts college faculty will promote better undergraduate teaching. This means creatively facilitating the research interests of faculty and drawing on those interests to create intellectual community for both faculty and…

Liberal arts college deans have a special responsibility to link faculty needs with institutional resources and goals. Deans need to help faculty members find research projects and approaches that fit the college's resources and to support them in their sometimes competing roles. (MSE)

The quest for diversity must overcome the resistance of traditional White, male faculty to redefining the mission and curriculum of the liberal arts college. Change will be difficult, but it must occur if liberal arts colleges are to survive and maintain a central and relevant place in multicultural America. (MSE)