Eight Challeges for Liberal Arts Colleges - A Reading List

If you read my earlier post on the Eight Challenges for Liberal Arts Colleges, you may find these reports and sources of data useful and interesting:

• Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education: Knocking at the College Door
• Measuring Up 2008: The National Report Card on Higher Education
• Trends in the Higher Education Labor Force: Identifying Changes in Worker Composition and Productivity
• High-Impact Educational Practices
• How Should Colleges Prepare Students to Succeed in Today’s Global Economy?
• Facts & Figures from The Chronicle of Higher Education

Eight Challenges for Liberal Arts Colleges

I can enumerate eight challenges that liberal arts colleges must face in the near future:

1. Changing demographics:

(a) The number of high school graduates will level off in the next 20 years, so competition for students will be fierce.

(b) College students will be more diverse ethnically and culturally, so the curriculum also must become more diverse.

2. Affordability: Tuition and fees have been rising at higher rates than healthcare, median household income, and the CPI.

3. Dwindling resources and cost containment: Tuition revenue and endowments will level off or decrease in a difficult economy.

4. The value proposition: Colleges must communicate to students and their families that a liberal arts education has great value. See http://jdepaula1.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-is-value-of-liberal-arts-education.html.

5. Assessment of learning outcomes: Colleges must prove to students and employers that a liberal arts education imparts useful skills.

6. The student of the future must learn to think critically, communicate well, and understand science, technology, and global issues.

7. The curriculum of the future must make stronger connections between the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

8. The curriculum of the future must promote global citizenship and leadership.

The good news for liberal arts Colleges is that the existing curriculum--to the extent that it is possible to generalize--already teaches some essential skills: critical and creative thinking, analytical and quantitative reasoning, effective writing. But these skills are often developed within discipline-centric majors, which by design promote early specialization. Students have few opportunities to explore connections between disciplines, to understand "big issues" by examining multiple perspectives. For example, seldom is an English major--even someone who meets all requirements of a general education program--asked to think critically and creatively about solutions to a complex problem, such as climate change, by synthesizing concepts of economics, chemistry, political science, philosophy. Yet a student who faces and conquers such an intellectual challenge is prepared to articulate the value of a liberal arts education to a prospective employer. More importantly, this student will become an informed citizen with the potential to lead local and global communities.

As Professor Copenhaver stated in http://jdepaula1.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-is-value-of-liberal-arts-education.html, a liberal arts education 'makes a certain kind of good life possible – one that is embedded in relations that provide life with meaning: relations to the past, the world, and to other persons.’ Relations to the past, the world, and to other persons change over time because society, perspectives, and our collective body of knowledge change over time. Therefore, the liberal arts curriculum must change over time as well. So let us renew our commitment to reform by engaging actively in open conversation about the curriculum we want to create for our students. And let us broaden access to this curriculum by making a liberal arts education affordable to all students who want it. This curriculum will be our legacy.

Undergraduate research at Lewis & Clark College, part 6: The role of the Student Academic Affairs Board

At Lewis & Clark College the Student Academic Affairs Board (SAAB) makes research grants to students, enhancing the undergraduate research options discussed in earlier posts. For an example of a SAAB-funded project, please click here.

The Value of Undergraduate Research

Much of what I wrote in my opinion piece from 2001 on undergraduate research is still valid today. The same topic is addressed in the same issue of Chemical & Engineering News by Profs. Abrash and Bussell.

Incidentally, the student profiled in my opinion piece, Shelli Frey, went on to receive a doctorate from the University of Chicago and is now an assistant professor of Chemistry at Gettysburg College.

Undergraduate research at Lewis & Clark College, part 5: Mathematics and Computer Science

The following summer undergraduate research projects in Computer Science and Mathematics were funded by grants from the National Science Foundation:

Title: Computer Go: Enhancing Monte Carlo Tree Search
Faculty mentors: Peter Drake, Yung-Pin Chen, Jens Mache
Students: Walt Javins ‘11, Jessica Mullins ‘10, Seth Pellegrino ‘10, Bobby Dygert (University at Buffalo), Travis Mandel (Carnegie Mellon University), Drew Tillis (Hendrix College)
Abstract: The Asian game of Go has simpler rules than Chess, but writing a Go-playing program that can compete with strong human players has proven exceedingly difficult. In fact, Go is considered one of the "grand challenges" of artificial intelligence. The Monte-Carlo approach has significantly strengthened the performance of computer Go programs. The team examined and improved the RAVE (Rapid Action Value Estimation) algorithm proposed by Gelly and Silver in 2008, and enhanced the Monte Carlo tree search with two revised RAVE algorithms. Click here for Lewis & Clark’s Orego page and here for more information about the NSF grant that supported this work.

Title: Towards Contour Tracking with Wireless Sensor Networks.
Faculty mentor: Jens Mache
Student: Samuel Bock '11
Abstract: An emerging class of small computers, outfitted with sensors and linked by radio transceivers, can form perceptive sensor networks that will connect more intimately the virtual and physical worlds. This work focuses on making these new technologies accessible to undergraduates through the use of activity based labs and a web accessible collaborative environment. The team explored communication, localization, power management, security, data aggregation and contour tracking. Click here for information about the NSF grant that supported this work.

Undergraduate research at Lewis & Clark College, part 4: Environmental Studies

The following summer undergraduate research projects in Environmental Studies were funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Lewis & Clark College:

Title: The Effect of Message Framing as a Function of Place
Faculty mentor: Brian Detweiler-Bedell, Associate Professor of Psychology
Students: Amanda Hamilton-Cave, Allison Sweeney
Abstract: Attitudes and decisions are often shaped by context quite dramatically and in ways that violate the principles of rationality. One such contextual influence is how decisions are
framed. Individuals think and act differently depending on whether they focus on the advantages of a course of action (i.e., a gain frame) versus the drawbacks of inaction (i.e., a loss frame). In this project, we will apply past research concerning psychological message framing to environmental attitudes and decisions. We hypothesize that the concreteness of place will influence the effectiveness of gain-framed versus loss-framed appeals.

Title: Global/Local Food Networks: Wine & Foie Gras
Faculty mentors: Daena Goldsmith, Professor of Communication; Deborah Heath, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Student: Emily Nguyen
Abstract: The interdisciplinary study of agrifood networks implicates nature and culture, local/global processes, rural and urban environments, production and consumption. The proposed project explores the production, distribution, and consumption of two luxury commodities—fois gras and wine—across Oregon, California, and France. We will study networks that link human and nonhuman actors as well as the competing discourses that construct claims about “quality,” “taste,” and “ethics.” Using actor-network theory and situated knowledge approaches, these two case studies will contribute to interdisciplinary scholarship on neo-artisanal agrifood networks that offer alternatives to large-scale agriculture, and to declining local industries like timber.

Title: Building Web2.0 Environmental Research Resources
Faculty mentor: Jim Proctor, Director/Professor of Environmental Studies
Students: Sarah Bobertz, Dick Burnham-Fink
Abstract: Capping off three years of development, Peter Vidito, Administrative Coordinator for the ENVS Program, worked with student research assistants Sarah Bobertz and Richard Burnham-Fink to finalize a set of online resources to support high-quality environmental research, a major objective of the Program's Andrew Mellon Foundation-sponsored initiative. Their work underscores the Program's Web2.0 approach in building a scholarly community around these resources and equipping it with cutting-edge research tools ranging from academic bookmarking to concept mapping to geographic information systems. The sheer number and diversity of relevant publications, organizations, data, and perspectives on contemporary environmental issues can overwhelm an individual researcher; only by intelligently collecting and sharing these resources and tools are we going to deliver on the potential this century's technologies offer us.

Undergraduate research at Lewis & Clark College, part 3: Summer Program in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

Nine faculty-student teams in the arts, humanities and social sciences were supported with internal research grants during the summer of 2009. The teams and their project titles are:

J.M. Fritzman, associate professor of philosophy, and student Kristin Thornburg ’11 – “Interpretive Problems Regarding Two Transitions in Hegel’s Philosophy.”

Daena Goldsmith, professor of communication, and student Greg Miller ’10 – “Couple Communication and Coping With Cancer.”

Oren Kosansky, assistant professor of anthropology, and student Kelly Aldinger ’10 – “Moroccan Jews in the French Colonial Archives.”

Robert Mandel, professor of international affairs, and student Sarah Patterson ’12 – “Dark Logic: Transnational Criminal Tactics and Global Security.”

Joel Martinez, assistant professor of philosophy, and student Hannah Tierney ’10 – “Understanding Moral Judgment: Does Empirical Psychology Reveal the Limits of Moral Philosophy?”

Arthur O’Sullivan, Dr. Robert B. Pamplin. Jr. Professor of Economics, and students James Elwell ’10 and Shelley Zhao ’10 – “Using Agent-Based Models to Replicate the Intra-Urban Distribution of Employment.”

G. Mitchell Reyes, assistant professor of communication, and student Mariana Aroxa ’10 – “The Obama Effect: Race and Representation in ‘A More Perfect Union’.”

Heather Smith, assistant professor of international affairs, and student Andrew Foote ’10 – “Evaluating Empirical Trends in Ratification of Human Rights Treaties.”

Cara Tomlinson, assistant professor of art, and student Nick Makanna ’10 – “Painting at the End of the World: Investigation of the Interactions Between Post-Apocalyptic B-Movies and French Historical Painting.”