Globalizing Liberal Education: Perspectives from Three Innovative Liberal Arts Colleges:
CIEL Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities

CIEL was represented for the third year at the national AAC&U meeting in Washington , D. C., January 25 - 28 2006, before a standing room only crowd. The conference theme was Liberal Education in an Era of Global Competition, Anti-Intellectualism, and Disinvestment. CIEL campus representatives Ed Clausen, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Daemen College, Steve Weisler, Dean of Academic Development at Hampshire College, and Carol Brandt, Vice President for International Programs at Pitzer College discussed the signature programs at their respective campuses that prepare students for life in a global society. Karen Spear, Executive Director of CIEL, introduced the panel and the consortium and led a small group exercise that involved the audience in a thought experiment  to develop a domestic "study abroad" program by being explicit about the goals and purposes of external study. Ed Clausen framed the issues by describing how western ways of thinking and valuing, grounded in absolutes about individual freedom and rationalism, hinder genuine engagement with non-western societies. He laid out a central tension in globalizing the curriculum as the pushes and pulls between a social justice agenda and the acquisition of knowledge, between tensions over absolutism and relativism, and named the challenge of liberal education as teaching for critical thinking as opposed to teaching for conversion. This is the basis for Daemen College 's new global studies requirement.

Steve Weisler traced the evolution of Hampshire College 's multiple cultural perspectives requirement to its current global migrations program - an initiative that takes up the consequences and implications for questions of identity and belonging that follow on the unprecedented migrations of people across national and cultural borders in today's global society. The impulse behind this development has been to embed the college's social justice mission in a context of global learning, starting with helping students move beyond a simplistic identification of "the Other" as either an exotic or oppressed.

Carol Brandt placed the global question in more local contexts, asking the audience to consider how students can achieve the kind of cultural immersion typical of an international program at home - by studying and working in local communities of immigrants or parts of the United States that are very different culturally from students' home communities. Pitzer's program in the nearby Ontario community and Daemen's significant engagement with downtown Buffalo, New York are examples of such local/global innovations.

The challenge, all three speakers agreed, is to destabilize students' cultural and intellectual comfort zones, to engage personal, cultural, political, and intellectual differences from an informed but principled perspective, and to become engaged and responsible local and international citizens. They seek to help students ask the question, "Who are you in relation to people who are very different from you?"

Welcome to New CIEL Member Campuses: Berea College and the Gallatin School of NYU

Berea College

Unlike most of the CIEL campuses that were founded in the spirit of educational revolution of the late 1960's, Berea College was established as an interracial, anti-caste college for students of limited means from the Appalachian region in 1869, with roots in the anti-slavery movement of the mid nineteenth century. Its entering student body consisted of 187 students, 96 of whom were Black and 91 White. Berea remains today a non-denominational, Christian liberal arts college for low income students from the southern Appalachian region. All students receive a full tuition scholarship and participate in the college's labor program by working 10 - 15 hours per week in 130 different labor departments. Fifteen hundred students are currently enrolled, 73% from the Appalachian region. The college's mission is to create a democratic community dedicated to service to others and the region. Berea has been named the top regional liberal arts college in the South. In addition to its exemplary labor program, its community service initiatives and institutional commitment to social justice align strongly with the philosophies and practices of other CIEL schools. Stephanie Browner, Dean of the Faculty, is the CIEL contact: Stephanie_browner@berea.edu .

Gallatin School of Individualized Study

The Gallatin School of Individualized Study is a small innovative college embedded within New York University . It was created in 1972, and while originally called the University Without Walls, its present name recognizes Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasure under Thomas Jefferson, for his vision of an active, engaged, community-based education. Gallatin enrolls 1200 undergraduates and 200 graduate students. Its academic focus, like that of several of the CIEL institutions, is on self-constructed academic programs that are interdisciplinary and highly experiential. Courses of study draw on the many resources of New York City through internships and independent study as well as courses offered anywhere in the NYU curriculum. Students work closely with a faculty advisor who is involved in the design, supervision, and evaluation of independent programs. One of Gallatin 's current initiatives is its community-based learning emphasis. David Moore, Interim Associate Dean, is the CIEL contact: david.moore@nyu.edu .

Spring Student Symposium

Pitzer College will host the second annual Spring Student Symposium on March 30 and 31, 2006. The Symposium theme is Global and Local Citizenship . Students from all the CIEL campuses will travel to Pitzer to share posters on their academic work and make formal presentations. As with last year's symposium at New College , a viewbook of abstracts, biographical sketches, and photographs for all the presenters will be published. If you would like to have a copy of last year's viewbook or the upcoming viewbook, contact Karen Spear, spear@lorenet.com . For more information about the Pitzer meeting, contact Kebokile Dengu-Zvobgo, Kebokil_dengu-zvobgo@pitzer.edu .

Student Exchanges among CIEL Campuses

The CIEL student exchange program is picking up momentum. The map below indicates the many pathways of CIEL students who have taken advantage of this opportunity. Faculty throughout the consortium are strongly encouraged to let students know that this program is open to them. It enables students to experience different educational environments and to take advantage of the academic strengths of sister institutions.

Fall 2006 Conference at Hampshire College - Mark Your Calendars - Preliminary Invitation

Hampshire College will host next fall's Annual CIEL Conference, October 19 - 21 . Faculty from all CIEL schools are invited to submit proposals for presentations. The Fall Conference format stresses dialogue and sharing of ideas and practices in a relatively informal atmosphere. Interested faculty should contact their campus coordinator or either of the conference planners: Karen Spear, CIEL Executive Director, spear@lorenet.com or Steven Weisler, Dean of Academic Development at Hampshire College , sewCCS@helios.hampshire.edu .

The conference theme will extend last year's conversation on Teaching for Social Justice and Responsibility by considering the following kinds of questions:

• Assessing student outcomes in teaching for social justice and responsibility :  Does teaching for social justice matter in students' lives?  How do we know?  What kinds of action research designs can tell us about our pedagogical effectiveness and impacts on students?  What can we learn/have we learned about the impacts of our programs on our communities?  What should we be doing in light of what our assessment results tell us?  What kinds of questions should we be asking?
• Practicing activism :  Teaching for social justice has begun to be identified publicly as part of higher education's perceived left-wing agenda, threatening a backlash from conservative camps.  What are the political impacts of academic work that is oriented toward social justice?  What can/should we be doing to place perceptions of our practices in the political center?  What role can service learning projects play in positioning the college constructively within the community?  What responsibility can/should faculty assume for linking the well-being of their campuses with service to the community-what we might term institutional sustainability for the socially responsible campus -- with their pedagogical practices?  How can we gather evidence and muster arguments about the value of what we do within our own communities?
• Classroom and institutional practices:  As innovative institutions, what distinctive practices are emerging at CIEL schools in the teaching of social justice?  How, if at all, does this work anticipate a new and different role for liberal arts institutions during a period calling for change in our mission and practices?  For higher education more generally?  What leadership role can/should CIEL schools play in promulgating our work within the higher education community?
• Global Migrations: Any understanding of social justice is incomplete without an informed appreciation for the many peoples who constitute our society and the unprecedented migration patterns that are transforming conceptions of knowledge, culture, and citizenship. How do transnational movements of people create new identities and new spaces in which questions and conflicts over identity, belonging, and citizenship are worked out? What happens when the study of human migration and movement takes precedence over fixed political and geographic entities, when we emphasize "routes" over "roots"? Hampshire faculty will take the lead in featuring their "global migrations" program, but faculty with interests in these questions from other CIEL campuses are strongly encouraged to participate.

More information on next fall's conference will be forthcoming in the next newsletter.

CIEL Book Project on Teaching for Social Justice and Responsibility

Last fall's conference began a collaborative project to write a much-needed book on the conference theme of teaching for social justice and responsibility. You can follow the progress of our work by using our Blackboard link at http://distance.daemen.edu .

Hermit Crab Classifieds: Shell Exchange

Fairhaven College has two openings next year for temporary faculty as sabbatical replacements:

Art, especially printmaking: Full year replacement

Communications/Womens Studies/Oral History: Spring quarter

Contact Marie Eaton, marie.eaton@wwu.edu for information.

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