I don't know that this will help Scott, but I thought it would be of
general interest: Templeton Foundation just gave $2 million AAC&U for
National Initiative on Fostering Personal and Social Responsibility
Among Today's College Studdents. Call for proposalsis coming out in
Fall 2006 according to the Press Release below.
Press Release
Debra Humphreys
Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs
202-387-3760 ext. 422
Humphreys@aacu.org
Washington, DC—June 21, 2006—The Association of American Colleges and
Universities (AAC&U) announced today the receipt of a $2 million grant
to support a national initiative designed to work with a network of
colleges and universities to more purposefully develop their students'
personal and social responsibility. Core Commitments: Fostering
Personal and Social Responsibility on College and University Campuses
will support educational leadership, research, and campus change to
help college students pursue excellence and develop integrity and
responsibility.
"College can and should be a time when students consciously make a
commitment to reach for excellence in the use of their talents, take
responsibility for the integrity and quality of their work, and engage
in meaningful practices involving both action and reflection that
prepare them to fulfill their obligations as responsible citizens,"
said AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider. "We are very pleased to
build on our earlier work in the Greater Expectations Initiative to
advance these important goals of college learning."
The Core Commitments initiative is part of AAC&U's continuing effort
to achieve "greater expectations" for student learning. It builds on
AAC&U's Greater Expectations initiative and will be focused on five
major dimensions of personal and social responsibility and those
aspects of campus culture that might positively or negatively affect
the development of these key dimensions of identity. The initiative
will work on:
developing a strong work ethic
recognizing and acting on a sense of academic integrity
recognizing and acting on the responsibility to contribute to the
larger community
recognizing and acting on the obligation to take seriously the
perspectives of others; and
developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning.
The initiative will entail four interrelated strands of work including
A Call to Action that provides a conceptual framework for this work,
the development of research tools and evidence, a leadership
consortium initially involving 20 campuses, and an expanding network
of educational leaders across the country.
The initial phase of the project will entail the development and
testing of an assessment template that examines attitudes toward the
five dimensions of personal and social responsibility named above.
"We believe it is crucial to assess and document the effects of
college on students' growth on dimensions of personal and social
responsibility," says AAC&U's Senior Vice President, Caryn McTighe
Musil, who will be directing the project. "We have turned to two of
the nation's leading experts to help us accomplish that."
Those experts are Richard Hersh, former president of both Trinity
College in Hartford and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, former
director of Harvard University's Center for Moral Development, and
currently with the Council for Aid to Education, and L. Lee
Knefelkamp, professor of psychology and education at Teachers College,
Columbia University and a leading national scholar on intellectual and
moral development. These two AAC&U Senior Fellows will lead the
research components of the initiative.
Thanks to earlier support form the Templeton Foundation, AAC&U
consulted with leading scholars and researchers on individual and
social responsibility as outcomes of college learning. The results are
available in a special issue of its journal, Liberal Education. To
read some of the articles in that issue or order copies, see
www.aacu.org/liberaleducation.
A Call for Participation in Core Commitments will be issued in Fall
2006.
For information about the project, or about AAC&U's Greater
Expectations Initiative and other AAC&U resources on the topic, see
www.aacu.org.
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