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SPRING 2011 NEWSLETTER

 

FROM THE PRESIDENT

 

This issue of the Teagle Foundation newsletter gives us a chance to recapitulate a busy year and to anticipate several projects for the future. One of the best ways to do this is by linking you to resources - articles, lists of recent grants, reports, a book - that have appeared on the Teagle website or in other online locations. Our recent publications have come to many of you directly or have been posted earlier, but when seen in the context of recent grants, you can see connections to our activities, goals and strategies more clearly. If you have missed them, you can connect directly to your interests through the links that are provided.

 

Take a look at the substantial book of essays and studies on disciplinary assessment in literary fields entitled Literary Study, Measurement, and the Sublime: Disciplinary Assessment, edited by Donna Heiland and Laura J. Rosenthal, with the assistance of Cheryl Ching.  You can download the book on our website, and find out more about the work in two articles: "Assessing the Sublime" in Inside Higher Ed and "Let's Close the Gap Between Teaching and Assessing" in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Those interested in student learning and experiential education will also find a valuable study and analysis by Lee Cuba the former dean and Diana Chapman Walsh the president emeritus of Wellesley College entitled "Designing a Liberal Arts Curriculum that Develops the Capacity for Effective Practice." 

 

The 2010 Annual Report: Arriving at Where We Started  provides a roadmap to and rationale for the various lists of grants that are included here, including those made at our recent May 2011 Board meeting.  Through the strategic themes that the Annual Report summarizes and the programs that it sketches, you will find the background for our grants. Consistent with our mission of mobilizing thought and action to improve liberal learning in the arts and sciences, we continue to provide resources that will touch different dimensions and issues in teaching and learning in colleges and universities.

 

The Teagle Foundation's continued commitment to improving student learning in colleges and universities has also led us to delve into the role of presidential and board leadership in student learning.  In mid-April, the Foundation hosted a Listening to advance the discussion on the responsibilities of presidents in assessing and improving student learning as well as the role of the governing board in the assurance of academic quality.  To find out more about the work of the Listening, please read Peter Struck's report.  

 

A major new effort has been our "Engaging Evidence" initiative, and we have now made a number of grants in this area that all focus addressing the vexing problem of using the data accumulating on campuses as a basis to take specific actions to improve student learning.  Following up on our Listening in the fall of 2010 on "Re-imagining Liberal Education," we have also awarded a series of planning grants to educational associations and consortia to - consider how a focus on improving student learning combined with the intense economic pressures facing colleges and universities - result new forms of faculty work and even faculty professional identity.

 

The same concern for changes in faculty professional identity stands behind another emerging project. At the end of April, the Foundation hosted a meeting of representatives from seven prominent universities, the Council of Graduate Studies and several disciplinary societies. Many of the attendees had received pilot grants to explore ways in which the preparation of graduate students for teaching might become a larger focus of graduate education. More precisely, we encouraged attention to the ways that new understanding of  student learning through cognitive science and assessment could become part of the repertoire of students preparing for college teaching.  Based on the meeting and reports from grantees, the Foundation will soon announce plans to further develop this work. 

 

In addition, the Foundation is beginning to think about next steps for our College-Community Connections (CCC) program, which involves partnerships between community-based organizations that have strong college preparatory programs and colleges and universities in the New York City metropolitan area.  In preparation for the next round of funding in this area, the Foundation convened current CCC grantees to discuss what has worked, where room for improvement lies, and also to begin designing possibilities for the future.  To be sure, much fine work has stemmed from these partnerships, including the recent oral history project website from the students who are part of the Double Discovery Center at Columbia University.  

 

I encourage you to browse around and learn more about Teagle's current work.  Finally, I wish you a pleasant and productive summer ahead.

 

Best,

Richard L. Morrill

IN THIS ISSUE
From the President
Teagle News
Recent Grants

TEAGLE NEWS
 

 

 George Bugliarello

 

Teagle mourns the passing of George Bugliarello, president emeritus and former Chancellor of Polytechnic Institute of New York (NYU-Poly), who died on February 18, 2011.  Dr. Bugliarello was an educational visionary who served for 28 years as a member of the Foundation's Board of Trustees. 

 

***

 

Teagle President

 

Rich Morrill

 

Richard L. Morrill writes on

 

Integral Leadership

and

"Fundraising from Two Perspectives - College President and Foundation President"

 

 ***

 

Teagle Staff

 

 
We extend a fond farewell to Cheryl Ching after six extraordinary years and welcome Anne Bezbatchenko as Program Associate and Ann-Marie Buckley as Controller.

 

 

 ***

 

The Teagle Foundation is pleased to be celebrating one year at our new location!

 

570 Lexington Avenue,

38th Floor

New York, New York 10022

 

 

 

 

________________________
 

 

RECENT TEAGLE PUBLICATIONS 

 

 

2010 Annual Report

Arriving at Where We Started

 

 

Teagle Book

Literary Study, Measurement, and the Sublime: Disciplinary Assessment 

Edited by Donna Heiland and Laura J. Rosenthal, with the assistance of Cheryl Ching

 

 

Skidmore College

White Paper

Engaging Sophomore Students with Liberal Learning: Focused Exploration through Academic Advising

  

 

Double Discovery Center (DDC) at Columbia University

Oral History Project Website

 

 

 Indiana University's

History Learning Project

Website

 

 

Designing a Liberal Arts Curriculum that Develops the Capacity for Effective Practice

By Lee Cuba and Diana Chapman Walsh 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RECENT GRANTS

 

Outcomes and Assessment

 

Engaging Evidence Grants 

 

$220,000 over 16 months to the Council of Independent Colleges to create a network of private colleges and universities systematically trained with the knowledge they need to more fully use their assessment data to improve student learning (more details).

 

$200,000 over 24 months to Agnes Scott College and Davidson College to enhance student learning among the colleges' first-generation and underpresented minority students, especially during students' first year of college (more details).  

 

$300,000 over 29 months to Bucknell University, Dickinson College, and Lafayette College to enhance diversity and diversity education (more details).

 

$200,000 over 24 months to Dartmouth College and Brown University to work toward embedding faculty development and learning-centered practices into departmental structures (more details).

 

$199,234 over 24 months to Wesleyan University and Amherst College to examine existing data on student writing and develop robust pedagogical support for faculty and new courses that incorporate that pedagogy (more details).

 

$200,000 over 24 months to Xavier University of Louisiana and Dillard University to improve student performance in select first-year and developmental courses that work toward key learning outcomes as part of an overall retention effort (more details).

 

$200,000 over 30 months to Willamette University and Lewis & Clark College to use existing data to implement two distinct programmatic interventions that have as their aim the improvement of students' quantitative reasoning and skills (more details).

 

$200,000 over 25 months to Wofford College and Elon University to enhance student learning by making assessment evidence more transparent, accessible, and actionable at the level of academic and co-curricular departments (more details).

 

Planning Grants: Engaging Evidence

 

$70,000 over 12 months to Gettysburg College, Union College, and Washington and Lee University to focus on building increased engagement as well as enhanced integrative thinking among their students (more details).

 

$50,000 over 10 months to University of Puget Sound and Whitman College to undertake the planning phase of a project that will develop and use assessments of major-specific senior capstones to refine department and program outcomes and in so doing, improve students' academic experiences (more details).

 

Other Outcomes and Assessment Grants

 

$250,000 over 24 months to University of Southern California, Loyola Marymount University-Los Angeles, and Whittier College to expand transfer pathways into private postsecondary institutions for underrepresented community college students (more details).

 

Fresh Thinking

 

Faculty Work and Student Learning in the 21st Century

 

$30,000 over 24 months to University of Southern California to conduct a modified Delphi policy study with experts to problem solve and generate solutions for non-tenure track faculty majorities and enhanced student learning (more details)

 

Planning Grants: Faculty Work and Student Learning in the 21st Century

 

$20,000 over 6 months to the Association of American Colleges and Universities to study the relevant scholarly literature on integrative learning, conduct interviews with leaders at a dozen universities that have focused on making integrative learning a key focus, and hold a national meeting informed by this prior work (more details).

 

$15,000 over 6 months to the Associated Colleges of the Midwest to engage in an intensive planning process that will begin with a day-long meeting of the Deans of is member colleges to idenify the specific project centered on faculty work and student learning (more details).

 

$14,902 over 6 months to the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges to strengthen student learning by sharing disciplinary expertise across campuses, focusing especially on developing a network of expertise on which students can draw for undergraduate research projects (more details).

 

$15,000 over 6 months to the Great Lakes Colleges Association to form a network of faculty fellows who will - in small teams - visit the consortium's member campuses to work with interested colleges on developing innovative teaching practices based in current research on how people learn (more details).

 

$15,000 over 6 months to Imagining America to explore the potential of "civic professionalism" - understood as a bridging of civic and professional life, of practical and intellectual learning - for strengthening teaching and learning in the arts and humanities (more details).

 

$15,000 over 6 months to the Independent College Enterprise to develop a course model by which a course taught by an experienced faculty member at one institution is available at the others via web-based technology, with junior faculty or graduate students monitoring the course at those other institutions (more details).

 

$15,000 over 6 months to the New American Colleges and Universities to: (1) develop a consortial plan for faculty professional development that acknowledges and rewards faculty members for their effectiveness in teaching and student learning and (2) identify concrete ways to measure and evaluate faculty work in light of expanding 21st century expectations, especially in non-standard learning environments (more details).

 

Other Fresh Thinking Projects

 

$75,000 over 24 months to The Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program to disseminate the recommendations from the book, Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession, to disseminate the book's recommendations by holding meetings for institutions to help them implement the key concepts of the book in their own business and liberal arts programs (more details).

 

$25,000 over 12 months to Reacting to the Past to assist with the creation of a sustainable business model for Reacting, an innovative, award-winning curriculum in which students participate in role-playing games set in historical periods of great importance (more details).  

 

 


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