I dare you to model behaviors you want to see in
#HigherEd
, to be unapologetic about naming racism/white supremacy, to pay minoritized folks what they're worth, to raise expectations for how diversity/equity are addressed, to engage in solidarity.
@LoriPattonDavis
#AACUDESS
“Caring about diversity without anti-racism or anti-colonialism is not justice… Without these things it reproduces violence.”
@hfdavis
#engagedinclusivity
Thank you to all of our participants, speakers, and sponsors who made
#AACU19
such a wonderful event. We look forward to seeing you all in DC for
#AACU20
!
New joint statement by
@aacu
@AHAhistorians
@AAUP
and
@PENamerica
opposes the wave of state legislation aimed at restricting education about racism and American history in schools, colleges, and universities. More than 75 other organizations also signed.
AAC&U and
@AAUP
released a joint statement on the value of liberal education: "Higher education’s contributions to the common good and to the functioning of our democracy are severely compromised when universities eliminate and diminish the liberal arts."
Many students work full time, are food insecure, or are homeless while working intensely to get a degree. "Don't use the word 'coddled' around me. I dont have many violent tendencies, but using 'coddled' about students around me might bring them up."--
@CathyNDavidson
at
#AACU19
Professors can have life-long effects on students, influencing their sense of belonging, well-being, academic pathways, & careers. However, a new report says that some students (especially students of color) have less access to these important mentorships.
Simply offering high-impact practices isn't enough to reap the benefits they provide, say
@Jillian_Kinzie
and George D. Kuh in response to a recent study on HIPs and graduation rates. Implementation should be equitable, intentional, and based on evidence.
"We have a moral imperative to think about who is and who isn't getting an education in our country. Who feels marginalized and left out, and why?"
@GoldieStandard
on
@chronicle
report "The Adult Student: The Population Colleges--and the Nation--Can't Afford to Ignore"
#AACU19
Americans have little understanding of today’s college students or challenges they face. Raising awareness of realities facing students is vital to providing the educational, financial, and personal support they need to succeed. More Facts & Figures:
The 2021 Frederic W. Ness Book Award goes to "The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom" by
@EddieRCole
. The Ness award will be formally presented at AAC&U’s annual meeting in January.
@PrincetonUPress
The college learning outcomes that employers rate as most important include oral communication, critical thinking, ethical judgment, working effectively in teams, written communication, and real-world application of skills and knowledge.
#AACUemployers
Getting faculty to participate is the "holy grail" of assessment. Faculty are the ones on the ground, they can understand classroom-based nuances in the data, and they are the most likely to use the results for improvement—
@ClaireHMajor
in her plenary at
#AACUGenEd18
.
Keynote speaker
@LoriPattonDavis
: the people most consistently working to make higher ed institutions reflect diversity, equity, and democracy are from minoritized communities and are treated as "the help," marginalized and given little room to engage more expansively.
#AACUDESS
We are thrilled to announce
@KateDMcConnell
's promotion as AAC&U’s vice president for curricular and pedagogical innovation and executive director of VALUE. She will continue her work to make quality and equity the foundations for excellence in
#HigherEd
.
"Professors just have to genuinely care. . . Even if you don't know what the student needs, if you care, you'll do what you can to help them." Students share their perspectives on what faculty can do to help them thrive.
#AACU20
“Employers Agree: College Degrees are Worth It”—New employer research includes opinions about confidence in colleges and universities, student preparation for work, valuable skill sets and experiences, internships, ePortfolios, & professional development:
We use a lot of euphemisms to talk about race without talking about race: diverse students, underrepresented minorities. Don’t skirt around race. Institutions should disaggregate data by race.
@ebensimon
and
@tiabmcnair
discuss their book “From Equity Talk to Equity Walk”
#AACU20
"Most Americans who earn an undergraduate degree start at a community college.... There's an opportunity there for private colleges...to get those students [and] make the private college seem welcoming." --
@ScottJaschik
of
@insidehighered
#AACU20
Ashley Finley of
@AACU
opens the premeeting symposium, "Learning to Thrive: Invisible Skills that Foster Student Success": "Invisible skills uniquely impact the trajectories of our minoritized students.... Whatever we...call these skills, they're anything but soft."
#AACU20
New AAC&U report explores employer views on higher education; the skills, mindsets, and experiences that set graduates apart; and an emerging generation gap among employers that may signal increasing support for liberal education.
"It is time to stop abusing your adjuncts. . . . When you read the stories about adjuncts sleeping in cars, you know that the system is not working."--
@ScottJaschik
at the
#AACU20
Opening Plenary
"The next frontier of our collective work on high-impact practices is to recognize that who students are and how they feel . . . is every bit as important as what they know and can do."–Ashley Finley, "Realizing the Full Potential of High-Impact Practices"
"We need to reject once and for all a deficit perspective that focuses on what students are missing and instead view our students through a new lens, offering an asset perspective.” Lynn Pasquerella
@CommishAACU
welcomes attendees to
#AACUdlss18
.
“We need to take it up a level and not just rely on students to make things better.” The burden is on campus leaders, in classrooms, in programs. “It’s the will of the leaders on the campus who can reshape our students’ experiences.”--Mary Dana Hinton
#AACU20
"Be the squeaky wheel [for equity], continue to be the person who with every fiber of your being holds yourself and your colleagues responsible. Please don't give up. We need more people to do that; we need more persistence."
@DrShaunHarper
#AACU20
Those who are racially minoritized are like the coal miners' canary. Others ignore problems that converge around racially minoritized people at their own peril. They are a sign that we are all at risk, and they are not expendable, says keynote speaker
@LoriPattonDavis
#AACUDESS
"In almost every instance when positive change has come about, . . . it has come from social movements" led by citizens—Doris Kearns Goodwin delivering her lecture, "Where Do We Go From Here? Leadership in Turbulent Times."
#AACU18
AAC&U's new employer research, “Fulfilling the American Dream: Liberal Education and the Future of Work,” shows that employers overwhelmingly endorse broad learning & cross-cutting skills as the best preparation for long-term career success.
#AACUemployers
"We need intergroup dialogue out the wazoo." Nancy Cantor, Chancellor of
@Rutgers_Newark
, kicks off the
#AACU18
Annual Meeting's Pre-Meeting Symposium with her opening plenary, "Mutually Beneficial Democratic Engagement Between Universities and Their Communities."
How important are college majors to future careers? According to a new report from
@EmsiData
, "Degrees at Work: Examining the Serendipitous Outcomes of Diverse Degrees," the majors students choose may mean less than we think.
Read our summary here:
Responding to a recent
@nytimes
article, AAC&U’s
@KateDMcConnell
argues for the value of assessment by exploring its role as a faculty-designed tool for institutions to "make sure that they fulfill the promise of their brochures to students and parents."
Campuses can't just use data showing equity gaps between groups of students. It's valuable, but incomplete. "Until we know the experiential realities that students face, giving more . . . financial aid won't fill the gaps."—
@DrShaunHarper
#AACU20
AAC&U is delighted to welcome Doris Kearns Goodwin to present the inaugural Carol Geary Schneider Lecture on Liberal Education and Inclusive Excellence. Doris Kearns Goodwin is a world-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
#AACU18
@DorisKGoodwin
Closing plenary speaker Amanda Kraus: “The environment disables people by design. We have the opportunity to design something inclusive or exclusive...I will always have this impairment but I may or may not be disabled. That’s determined by the environment.”
#engagedinclusivity
Congrats to
@tiabmcnair
!
@DiverseIssues
will feature her during
#WomensHistoryMonth
as one of 35 outstanding women who have tackled
#HigherEd
's toughest challenges, exhibited extraordinary leadership skills, and made a difference in their communities.
"First-generation college students tend to learn best when they hear lessons reinforced by alumni who were once in their position as students."—George J. Sanchez, professor at
@USC
, on "Curating Career Success for First-Generation College Alumni"
If
#HigherEd
wants to "make progress in bolstering the reputation of the academy within democratic society, colleges & universities must be visible drivers of the social, cultural, & economic well-being of their neighbors."—Lynn Pasquerella (
@CommishAACU
)
All colleges and universities must stand together with the communities most directly affected by racial inequity. AAC&U and the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation Campus Center at
@HamlineU
explore
#HigherEd
’s role in promoting racial healing.
"Democracy cannot flourish in a nation divided into haves and have-nots, and education plays a critical role in improving social mobility, carrying the potential to undermine the perpetuation of intergenerational inequality"–
@CommishAACU
's opening remarks at
#AACU18
.
This morning's
#AACUSTEM
keynote by Saundra Yancy McGuire, director emerita of the Center for Academic Success at
@LSU
, will help STEM educators "Transform STEM Education by Teaching Students How to Learn: Metacognition is the Key!"
#Metacognition
#STEMIsTheNewBlack
Educators often declare success in closing equity gaps when racially minoritized students reach the same performance level as majority students. But does this center whiteness as the definition of excellence, reinforcing privilege & racism in our policies?
AAC&U's Virtual Conference on Diversity, Equity, and Student Success kicks off with a workshop from
@ebensimon
and Maxine Roberts on "Engaging in Faculty Hiring as an Anti-Racist Practice." Here, participants shared the practices they see that reproduce whiteness.
#aacudess
"Regardless of the subject matter a student pursues, it’s up to us to help [them] become graduates who will become servant leaders for their communities. This is valuable work, and we must become better at making certain that our society knows about it."
How liberal arts programs are working to prove their value. "Employers continue to plead for college graduates to learn such things as communication and problem-solving skills that can come from studying the liberal arts."
@usnews
@hechingerreport
Today is International
@PronounsDay
, which seeks to make asking, sharing, & respecting personal pronouns commonplace. This article by Luca Maurer (he/him) of
@IthacaCollege
’s Center for LGBT Education, Outreach, & Services details why this is so important.
Saundra Y. McGuire (
@Metacog1
) gives the audience at the
#AACUSTEM
conference reading and homework strategies to help students develop metacognitive habits of mind.
Five experts, including AAC&U's
@ashleyfinleyphd
, each share one change institutions can make, in philosophy or practice, to improve the student experience and create a ‘holistic’ student experience.
#AACU20
"I want my students to experience a pedagogy of wholeness and interconnectedness that allows us to uncover deeper truths about our inner self, our fellow human beings, and our world."—Mays Imad, "Reimagining STEM Education: Beauty, Wonder, and Connection"
It’s not about how smart students are, it’s about knowing strategies to learn material.
@Metacog1
provides a five step study cycle to help students learn material well enough to be able to teach it to others.
#AACUSTEM
How can educators ensure that the rapid and unprecedented scaling of online learning doesn’t come at the expense of commitments to quality, equity, and inclusion? This free webinar will address a wide range of student success issues and opportunities.
"More than anything else, we see graduates who are questioning and complicating notions of what it means to be engaged, to be of 'service' to others and the public."—Richard M. Battistoni and Tania D. Mitchell, "Civic Identity and Agency after College"
"We should beware of generalizing about students' ability to tolerate different points of view...If you don't try to get your students to tolerate different points of view, you are in the wrong profession." Students grappling with texts shows a class is working.
@mroth78
#AACU20
#AACU20
would not be possible without the great keynotes, discussion sessions, panels, and presentations. Please share your presentation slides and other materials with meetings
@aacu
.org. We will post them on the website and send them in an email to all meeting registrants.
We're in an era of "data-driven," but don't let data be the driver. It'll drive you in a ditch. Humans need to drive assessment conversations, with data as a passenger—José Moreno in his
#AACUGenEd18
plenary, "Flipping the Conversation about General Education and Assessment"
.
@DiverseIssues
has dubbed AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella (
@CommishAACU
) one of this year's "Top 35 Women in Higher Education," along with women representing many of AAC&U's stellar member institutions across the country. Congratulations to all!
AAC&U welcomed more than 2,200 to our
#AACU20
Annual Meeting this week in Washington, DC. We look forward to seeing many of you at
#AACU21
next year in Seattle.
Relationships that students build are essential to their success. In focus groups, students say that even if they thought about dropping out, a relationship with someone—an instructor, a staff member, another student—gave them the support to keep going.
"A liberal education should give students a complete toolbox so they will be prepared for complex problems we cannot yet imagine—problems that might even require us to invent new tools."–
@josebowen
of
@gouchercollege
, adapted from an address at
#AACU18
.
"So much of college administration has become risk management... not standing for anything. We need to be able to stand for the value of truth, for the value of fairness."
@rooseveltmontas
#AACU22
Panelists Linda Martín Alcoff, Naomi M. Barry-Pérez, Tamara Draut, and Wes Moore speak in the
#AACU18
featured address, "Identity Matters: Realizing the American Dream."
@iamwesmoore
@tamaradraut
@bosqueflores
Announcing $1.7M from
@LuminaFound
to support the VALUE Institute to meet the critical, unmet need for direct evidence of student learning across
#highered
Caryn McTighe Musil explores how "becoming a global and national citizen is deeply dependent on how students use a civic lens as they learn to think like sociologists, nurses, chemists, communications experts, or African American Studies majors."
"We Hold These Truths: Dismantling Racial Hierarchies, Building Equitable Communities" describes the work of Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers to dismantle the tools that perpetuate oppression and entrenched racial hierarchies.
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2022 AAC&U-Cengage Inclusion Scholarship, which recognizes presidents whose outstanding leadership has reduced equity gaps, improved inclusion and belonging for minoritized students, & promoted diversity in hiring.
#AACU22
@CengageLearning
How can we be trying so hard but are only achieving incremental change rather than transformational change? Mary E. Boyce explores how
#HigherEd
can move from first-order to second-order change in enacting equity in STEM.
#AACUSTEM
"Diversity advocates must target the...culture of the organization for change, even when an issue seems entirely about one or two 'problem' people"—Frank D. Golom in "Alternate Conversations for Creating Whole-System Change around Diversity and Inclusion."
The college learning outcomes that employers rate as most important include oral communication, critical thinking, ethical judgment, working effectively in teams, written communication, and real-world application of skills and knowledge.
#AACUemployers
"Measuring the number of college degrees we produce is not enough; more important are the experiences that shape who our students become."—
@LenoreRodicio
on "Achieving Equity through Applied Liberal Education."
The audience for the
#AACU20
Opening Plenary honor the recipients of the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award, which recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education.
"A Comprehensive Approach to Assessment of High-Impact Practices," by
@ashleyfinleyphd
and co-released with
@NILOA_web
, outlines a process for assessing high-impact practices like learning communities, capstones, research, and community-based experiences.
.
@PittTweet
student Kathryn Fleisher: “It’s the responsibility of higher education to prepare the next generation to enter into the world [as] active members of society... Fighting injustice is as much of a reality for us as preparing for a career.”
#engagedinclusivity
"Global health is about the promise of what is possible"–Joia Mukherjee, addressing the Networking Breakfast for Women Faculty and Administrators at the
#AACU18
Annual Meeting with her speech, "Mentorship and Learning:
Thoughts on Paulo Freire in the 21st Century."
Americans have little understanding of today’s college students or challenges they face. Raising awareness of realities facing students is vital to providing the educational, financial, and personal support they need to succeed. More Facts & Figures:
"It’s time to stop asking whether [HBCUs and MSIs] have outlived their usefulness and start following their lead to identify and implement best practices in the...education of a diverse STEM workforce."—Triscia W. Hendrickson & John K. Haynes
@weareCASL
AAC&U is excited to welcome the 2019 Cross Scholars, who represent the next generation of leaders in
#highered
. They will share their experiences and perspectives in a session tomorrow morning at
#AACU19
.
Participants at the
#AACUglobal
conference in San Antonio visited the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service (
@RAICESTEXAS
) that has been making national news. They later attended a reception and discussion event with RAICES and
@Trinity_MAS
at
@Trinity_U
.
1/2 Panelists Timothy Eatman, Debra Schultz, Eduardo Ochoa, and Andrew Seligsohn speak on "Multiple Perspectives on Meaningful Civic Engagement" at the
#AACU18
Annual Meeting's Pre-Meeting Symposium.
@tkeatman
@CompactPrez
@CSUMB
@WagnerPres
Call for proposals is open for our 2023 Annual Meeting. The theme of the meeting is “Reclaiming Liberal Education.”
Visit our website to learn more about the session tracks and how to submit your proposal to present in San Francisco on January 18 – 20.
"We can’t be bystanders. In this moment, privilege shows up as disengagement.... Instead we want to approach the world woke, with eyes wide open, seeing the humanity in each other, reaching out to each other, moving forward together.”
@zentronix
#AACUdlss18
In her workshop on "Engaging in Faculty Hiring as an Anti-Racist Practice" for AAC&U's Virtual Conference on Diversity, Equity, and Student Success, Maxine Roberts explores how hiring committees can move from traditional to equity-minded conceptions of merit and fit.
#aacuDESS
Terrel Rhodes is retiring as vice president of the Office of Quality, Curriculum, and Assessment and executive director of VALUE. His visionary work at AAC&U and on campuses has led to transformative improvements in
#HigherEd
pedagogy and assessment.
Bias against the liberal arts influences public policy, yet AAC&U research shows that employers view the knowledge & skills developed across a college education, including in the liberal arts, to be most important for career success, writes
@CommishAACU
.
“I understand myself as a whole person so much more because of this ePortfolio.” If done well, ePortfolios show two things: what you can do and what kind of a person you are. Recent grad (and AAC&U staff member) Hannah Schneider joins her dad, Matthew Schneider, at
#AACU20
.