Educators who recognize the need to clarify their programs' goals have focused much effort over the past decade on learning outcome statements that summarize complex academic ideas in succinct terms. But have the projects gone far enough? While faculty have worked to demystify disciplines and programs, the words they use still come across as…

In this article, the authors describe how five institutions have employed the dynamic relationship between university-wide leadership efforts (the macro level); interactions and initiatives within the school, college, or department (the meso level); and efforts by individual instructors and activists (the micro level) to create change at their…

The author, winner of the 2017 Boyer Award, discusses her twentieth-anniversary edition of her book, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations about Race." When she told people that she was working on a new edition of her 1997 book, they typically responded with two questions: (1) "Is…

At the centennial annual meeting of the "Association of American Colleges and Universities" (AAC&U), President Carol Geary Schneider introduced the "LEAP Challenge," the next phase of AAC&U's Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative. The LEAP Challenge calls on all colleges and universities to engage…

Tim Clydesdale is professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey. This article is adapted from the author's forthcoming book "Calling on Purpose: The Conversation Every Campus Must Have with Students" (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Clydesdale met two students, James and Tracy, during their senior year of college, when his…

This article by José Antonio Bowen was presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the "Association of American Colleges and Universities" where the discussion included the question of how technology was bringing new tools and new competition to higher education, but was also changing basic rules about how "we operate" as human…

Ten years ago, AAC&U (then AAC) issued a landmark report, "Integrity in the College Curriculum: A Report to the Academic Community". Anticipating the academy's sternest external critics by nearly a decade, "Integrity" offered a sweeping and incisive critique of curricular practice throughout higher education. "As for…

In this article, Deborah Dunn reflects on the need to rethink the concepts of service learning. Students are well acquainted with the basic concept of service learning and community engagement, as some form of service or engagement is often required for them to graduate both high school and college these days. The lack of authentic meeting with…

Educators face the important challenge of preparing students to live constructively in a religiously diverse world. At some institutions, a reluctance to allow issues of faith into the classroom creates an obstacle to cultivating the skills students need to understand, process, and engage a religiously pluralistic society. At faith-based…

What are the odds of changing the culture of teaching and learning at a regional comprehensive university with twenty-three thousand students? Through the Claiming a Liberal Education (CLE) initiative, a group of faculty and administrators at Grand Valley State University sought to achieve this ambitious goal within the context of the university's…

Service learning has moved into the mainstream of American higher education as an effective pedagogical approach to improving the teaching and learning of course content, but it has not sufficiently addressed the civic dimensions of the disciplines. The next phase of service learning's development must focus on the achievement of civic learning…

For the past thirty years, much of the effort to improve the status of women in higher education has focused on the so-called "pipeline" theory, which held that a large number of women undergraduates and graduate students would, over time, yield larger numbers of women at the highest academic ranks. In other words, getting more women into college,…

At the college level, the obstacles to machine-testing of critical thinking are more pedagogical and practical than theoretical and include creating an operational definition, differentiating critical thinking skills and subskills, and establishing test reliability and validity. (MSE)

An approach to institutional resource management is proposed that takes into account the student body resource as a contributor to the institution's functioning and well-being. Eight steps in managing it are outlined, covering institutional objectives, diversity, direction, recruitment and marketing, and student flow. (MSE)

CHOICE, a resource center for informational literature, which is filling the need for information to students as consumers and providing colleges with improved models for better information to consumer students, is described. Problems with the project, such as the lack of theoretical groundwork for the research, are briefly identified. (PHR)