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Position Papers 1992 - 2002

  • WASC Self-Study: Learning within GE Programs at SSU
    "This program offers students a set of university-approved course options distributed among areas of learning. These areas of learning and their goals are as follows:
    • Communication and Critical Thinking (Area A) is designed to provide students with the level of writing, analytical and speaking proficiency appropriate for a university education.
    • Natural Sciences and Mathematics (Area B) is designed to examine the theories, methods and models by which scientific investigation proceeds and to imbue students with the same sense of curiosity and wonder about the natural world that inspires mathematicians and scientists in their work.
    • Arts and Humanities (Area C) is designed to cultivate and develop imagination, sensibility, sensitivity and interpretative skills and to develop understanding of the interrelationships among the creative arts, the humanities, and the self.
    • Social Sciences (Area D) is designed to describe and explain organization, variation, and change in social,practices and institutions.
    • The Integrated Person (Area E) is designed to study both the processes affecting individuals, such as psychological, sexual , or physiological changes throughout the human life cycle, and the interactions between the individual and society."
       
  • Mary Halavais & Arthur Warmoth. Liberal Arts as Pedagogy
    Content and character formation in the liberal arts tradition.
     
  • Susan McKillop. A Proposal for Combining GE with a Minor.
    A proposal to meet the general education requirements in Title 5 by combining a breadth requirement with a minor.
     
  • Frank H.T. Rhodes. A Battle Plan for Professors to Recapture the Curriculum.
    "Those in higher education have to learn to live together, not concealing their convictions, disguising their differences, or minimizing their concerns, but sharing them, step by step, forging a larger community that unites them in their humanity. ...Higher-education institutions must remain places of openness, tolerance, inquiry, robust debate, generous spirit, and welcoming inclusiveness. ...[U]niversities have some responsibility for the moral well-being, as well as the intellectual development, of their students. That is, after all, why most universities were founded."
     
  • Comments on the Asheville Draft by the Social Sciences Curriculum Committee 9/20/01
    Some pointed comments and questions by the School of Social Sciences faculty.
     
  • Debora Hammond. Some Thoughts on the Role of Dialogue in Learning Communities
    Abstract: Originally conceived as part of a panel on Kenneth Boulding's contributions to the systems field, this paper will focus on the theme of integrity. An essential element of Boulding's thought was his concept of the integrative function, which he saw as a critical third force in society, mediating between the exchange function of the marketplace and the coercive function of structures of authority and power. The integrative function, in its task of nurturing community and connection, depends upon the development of skills in communication, dialogue, and conflict resolution, as well as the cultivation of a systemic awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependence of our lives as individuals in an increasingly complex and global social order. The dominant model of education is not well suited to the task of nurturing such skills and awareness. Based upon my own experience teaching in a seminar-based, interdisciplinary liberal studies program, this paper will address the concept of learning communities in education as an approach that can support the development of integrity and wholeness in both individuals and society.
     
  • William M. Sullivan, Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Sizing Up the Predicament of Liberal Education
    The liberal education agenda, which emphasizes teaching, civic responsibility, and public service, as well as scholarship and research, has broad implicit public support. However, the liberal education community must craft a message that turns this potential into active political support.
     
  • Bigger Fish in Smaller Ponds: How Clusters Are Reinventing General Education at UCLA (Link to AAC&U News, October 2003)
    How UCLA solved the problem of "research universities as being out of touch with their undergraduates" by implementing topical clusters (learning comunities).
     
  • College Caught in a Vise by Stanley Fish (The New York Times, September 18, 2003)
    The public has a hard time understadning issues of cost and outcomes. 

Position Papers on Education For Citizenship