|
Colleges and universities are making tough decisions about budget cuts, hiring freezes, and reduction or elimination of programs. General education and assessment initiatives, in particular, can be vulnerable to cuts or to inattention as college and university leaders work to preserve enrolments, meet shortfalls, and maintain basic operations. Yet issues that existed long before the current economic crisis remain—fragmentation and incoherence, a lack of “ownership” of general education among many faculty members, and a desire among students to “get it out of the way.” What also remains is the need, through general education, to prepare all graduates with essential knowledge and skills, including global knowledge, scientific and quantitative literacy, intercultural skills, and ethical competencies.
The good news is that out of earlier periods of challenge and change, campus leaders have coalesced around more contemporary goals for student learning and new and creative curricula and pedagogy. They have also embarked upon meaningful assessment that was keyed to these new designs and utilized to strengthen learning.
As we now face another period of intense scrutiny and challenge, robust designs and persuasive information about the impact and value of general education are especially needed. This conference asks, what can institutions do to support and improve general education and assessment in the face of epic budget cuts? How can leaders continue to value general education and assessment, and express this value, as they make tough choices? How can institutions avoid, either explicitly or inadvertently, sacrificing important progress made in strengthening general education and assessment over the last decade? Most importantly, how can strong general education and assessment initiatives help institutions attract new students, better align scarce resources with vision and mission, and otherwise contribute to educational excellence and overall institutional vitality?
General Education and Assessment: Maintaining Momentum, Achieving New Priorities invites fresh thinking and new approaches to help faculty, staff, and administrators maintain momentum in general education and assessment during tough times, and reaffirms a commitment to engaged liberal education as the guiding principle for campus action. The conference will draw on AAC&U’s long-standing projects and publications on general education reform including work to bring diversity, global, and civic learning into general education and models for advancing scientific and quantitative literacy through real-world curricula and problem-based pedagogies.
|
