Upcoming Events

March 19, 2005: Meeting on Electronic Portfolios and Narrative Evaluation, Alverno College
Faculty from Alverno College, Evergreen College, Fairhaven College, and Daemen College will spend the day working to advance their knowledge of the implications and applications of these powerful assessment tools. Judith Patton, Director of University Studies at Portland State University, will present some of the cutting-edge work going on at Portland State to help participants think through advancing their practices at home.

April 15, 2005: Student Symposium, New College
Most colleges and universities describe themselves as student-centered, but what distinguishes the CIEL campuses is that they walk the talk. New College will host a student symposium in which two of the top students from each CIEL campus will present their academic projects to an audience of their peers. The day-long symposium will be telecast in real time to the other CIEL campuses to reflect the important work in which our students are engaged, and to invite students throughout the consortium to discuss and reflect on the individual projects and the value of advanced, independent, undergraduate research. The event also gives the CIEL schools the opportunity to make use of the technological links that will more readily enable students to enroll in courses at other CIEL campuses from their home campus, thus broadening the curricular opportunities open to them. Contact your CIEL campus coordinator for information about the symposium and encourage your students to tune in.

A viewbook from the symposium will offer abstracts of each student presentation and biographical sketches of each participant. These will be available to interested faculty through your campus coordinator.

Fall 2005: Annual CIEL Conference, Daemen College
Daemen College in Buffalo, New York, will host the consortium’s annual fall meeting. Details about the conference theme and program will be forthcoming, but as in the past, CIEL campuses are encouraged to send students as well as faculty.

Call for Student Work
CIEL’s on-line student journal (cielearn.org) enters its third year this summer. The on-line journal provides public access to CIEL students’ creative and scholarly accomplishments in recognition of the high quality of thought and expression that students achieve in an independent learning environment with dedicated faculty advising and review. A call for work has been issued on the CIEL website. Please encourage your students to submit their work and to take advantage of this unique publication opportunity. And check out what’s been published previously.

Patagonia Field School, Patagonia, Arizona
CIEL has been in active collaboration with the Bellows Foundation to participate in the development of a range of field school activities that emphasize ecological, cultural, and indigenous population issues in this borderland area of the Southwest. The Bellows Foundation is interested in helping faculty from CIEL campuses with the on-site logistics of courses or extended field trips to the area. See the CIEL website for an example of the first such course from Hampshire College: Ten Days in Patagonia.

A call for proposals has also been issued inviting faculty to participate in a cross-institutional team to develop a semester-long program in residence that emphasizes service learning in community sustainability in conjunction with the driving themes of ecology, border issues, and native peoples. See the posting on the CIEL website for background on the evolution of this initiative and details from the RFP.

Web Site Revision and Postings
Daemen College is supporting a redesign of the CIEL website, a project that will be completed this summer. The website has been an increasingly important tool not just for CIEL members but in accomplishing another of the consortium’s important missions: outreach to the higher education community to advance the importance of progressive undergraduate education. Several documents of interest to CIEL members have recently been posted, including a paper by Marie Eaton of Fairhaven College and Kathleen O’Brien of Alverno College on “Creating a Vital Campus Culture in a Climate of Restricted Resources” and a piece by Karen Spear, Ed Clausen, Tim Riordan, and Paul Burkhardt on “CIEL as an Agent for Campus Change,” based on a presentation at January’s American Association of Colleges and Universities annual meeting.

The redeveloped website will be more user-friendly, addressed to a wider range of audiences: CIEL faculty, staff, and administrators; CIEL students; students searching for the kinds of innovative, alternative undergraduate programs that the CIEL schools represent; educators interested in the various goals and practices in progressive education and the pacesetting work of the CIEL schools.

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