CIEL Welcomes Marlboro College

Berea College Hosting CIEL Fall Faculty Conference

Conference Theme: Transformative Education: Teaching and Learning to Make a Difference

National attention has become increasingly focused on what a college degree enables graduates to do, and not just what knowledge they acquire. In a climate of close scrutiny, academic borders of nearly every sort – geographic, intellectual, professional, cultural, virtual, and physical – among college campuses, their communities, and their constituents are in the midst of a profound renegotiation.

CIEL’s sixth annual Fall Conference will be a reality check for its members on the currency and impact of some of our most fundamental claims – that experiential, interdisciplinary, active and engaged learning is at the heart of a transformative education. As mainstream higher education embraces concepts of transformative education as a goal, how can the progressive colleges of the CIEL group continue to differentiate themselves and lead the way for others? What kinds of transformation do we seek to make? What are the tensions and trade-offs? What are the challenges and opportunities -- particularly for the community of progressive education -- to faculty, administrators, students, and the institutions themselves, and how shall we go about meeting them?

Berea College, the Conference host, was founded to make a difference in the lives of economically disadvantaged students from the Appalachian region, and it has been dedicated to bringing about positive change in its region and in the lives of its students since the Civil War era. It’s an appropriate setting to engage some of the big questions that confront us as teachers, scholars, and campus community members. Featured speakers bring a wealth of knowledge about the intellectual and institutional transformations underway in undergraduate education, and will offer provocative insights about how our campuses might position ourselves in the midst of such change. Speakers include Elizabeth Minnich, author of Transforming Knowledge and senior fellow for the Association of American Colleges and Universities; Alan Jones, Dean of Faculty at Pitzer College, and David Johnson, former program officer of the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education.

Please join colleagues from our 13 member schools for a time of high-level discussion, learning, collaboration, networking, reflection, and self-assessment. Panel presentations, study groups, and plenary session speakers will make this a thought-provoking event. See the CIEL website for the Call for Participation: www.cielearn.org/news.htm. Discuss proposals or interest in attending the event with your CIEL campus coordinator, or contact any of the following: Karen Spear, CIEL Executive Director, spear@lorenet.com, Megan Hoffman or Steve Gowler, hosts of the Berea conference, megan_hoffman@berea.edu or steve_gowler@berea.edu.

CIEL Cross Campus Connections

Prescott College’s Course on Borders Offers Model for Comparative Analysis

One of the Consortium’s purposes is to serve as a catalyst for contact and collaboration among faculty.  The goal is to stimulate professional association, augment course offerings and content, and, where possible, leverage resources.   Prescott College’s course, U.S. – Mexico Interface: The Border, offers one such opportunity.  Professor Bernardo Aguilar of Prescott’s Cultural and Regional Studies program has students engage in on-site research in border communities from Tijuana to Texas.   Fairhaven College and Western Washington University are also interested in border issues, including the work of anthropologist James Loucky in both the Canada-U.S. and Mexico-U.S. border regions.  After meeting at CIEL’s Fall Conference last October, Bernardo invited James to join the border class, and he caught up with them in Nogales.  
 
Students explored a range of economic, cultural, and environmental issues. They interviewed both residents and immigrants, visited business firms ranging from a large assembly plant to micro-enterprises, and talked with people involved in a variety of social justice services.  They considered the impacts of industry and agriculture, as well as potential changes in family structure and effects on the environment.  They tested drinking water and analyzed household energy use.  Beyond developing language skills, they learned to engage in dialogue across cultural differences.  As James summarized the experience, “There’s just no better way to challenge your perspective than by talking with people.”
 
The chance to introduce a comparative perspective to the course was rich, but so is this mode of cross-campus collaboration. Taking advantage of field-based component of courses can bring students and faculty together from different campuses.  The short duration of the Prescott field experience made it possible to overcome logistical problems of different academic calendars as well as financial constraints of off-campus study for many students.  Creating even short-term connections opens intriguing opportunities for continued collaborative work, across academic as well as international boundaries.

Fairhaven assists Berea in Developing Senior Capstone Requirement

Marie Eaton, Professor of Humanities and Education at Fairhaven, led several faculty workshops at Berea College as Berea gets an ambitious new General Education program under way. Berea’s new program culminates in an interdisciplinary senior capstone course. Marie conducted workshops on interdisciplinary teaching, team teaching, and ways to develop an interdisciplinary course. Marie’s work at Berea was an offshoot of the CIEL workshop presented last January at the Association of American Colleges and Universities national meeting, where a group of CIEL representatives offered an extended afternoon session on preparing faculty to teach interdisciplinary courses.

CIEL Continues Partnership with AAC&U

Engaged Learning Panel and Workshop on Reflective Self-Evaluation Scheduled for National Conference

Representatives from CIEL campuses will have considerable presence at the Association of American Colleges and Universities national meeting, scheduled in January in Washington, D. C. A pre-conference workshop on reflective self-evaluation will highlight practices at Alverno College, Prescott College, Fairhaven College, New Century College, and New College of Florida. A concurrent session on fostering engaged learning will include speakers from Daemen College, New Century College, Marlboro College, Johnson C. Smith University, and Berea College. The Consortium’s affiliation with the AAC&U has been a powerful liaison for CIEL’s goal of national outreach for innovative education.

CIEL Executive Director Co-Teaches Workshop on Engaged Citizenship in AAC&U’s Faculty Renewal Series

Karen Spear and Mary Ryan, Executive Director of the Washington Internship Institute, have been invited to offer a workshop at AAC&U’s October regional conference on faculty renewal in Denver. The workshop, Civic Engagement for an Inclusive Democracy, will help participants think about how to take their service learning and civic engagement initiatives from programs that support good works in the community to programs that help to orient students toward working for the common good in sustainable ways.

CIEL On-Line Student Journal Now Ready

Visit the CIEL website to see the newest issue of the CIEL student journal with submissions from students at six of the CIEL campuses. Heartfelt thanks go to co-editors Marie Eaton and Lauree Fletcher of Fairhaven College for their dedication to making our students’ work available to a larger public. This year’s theme is Frontiers and Borders: Translating the World. Contents include art, film, and photography, fiction and creative non-fiction, poetry and song, scholarship. As the editors note, the journal provides “a small window into the ways these innovative colleges work with students.” Go to http://www.cielearn.org/Journal_2007/journal_2007.htm.

Newsletter Editor: Karen Spear, CIEL

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