CIEL Voices & Visions: A Student Journal

Frontiers and Borders: Translating the World

Editors' Introduction 2007

Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.
                                                                                                                                                  --  John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.

                                                                                                                                                  -- Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

This on-line journal brings together the words and images of students from six different colleges (Fairhaven College, New College, Pitzer College, Prescott College, Johnson C. Smith University and Daemen College) members of the Consortium of Innovative Environments for Learning (CIEL).

The pieces reflect the voices and visions of the students in these colleges, and provide a small window into ways these innovating colleges work with students.  Most of these pieces were created in response to a question or an assignment in a writing or printmaking class, a prompt for an external learning journal, or a project in a class addressing a theme or issue. Some were created outside of any class or formal projects as expressions of voice and vision.

As in previous years, editing this on-line journal has been both a challenge and a joy. The submissions trickled in slowly, but finally e-mail boxes filled up with remarkable work.

I want to thank the CIEL campus coordinators from the participating colleges for responding to e-mails hounding them about deadlines and for gathering the pieces from their campuses. I also extend a special thanks to Danielle Woodman at Daemen College for being our webmaster.  CIEL's thanks also go to the Fund for the Improvement for Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) for the grant that supported the collaboration that has developed among and between our campuses. Finally, we want to express our gratitude to our students for sharing their voices and visions.

The Editors,

Marie Eaton, Campus Coordinator
Lauree Fletcher, Student Coordinator
Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Western Washington University