Associated
Colleges of the South > Newsletters > Winter 2001 Newsletter |
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Winter 2001
Mellon Foundation Grant Supports "New Dimensions" For ACS In December, ACS received a $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help with a number of the "new dimensions" contained in the consortium's five-year plan for the future. The grant will help underwrite items for which funding had not been identified or secured. "This grant is a wonderful tribute to the presidents and chief academic officers of ACS institutions who devoted time and energy to forging the plan for the consortium for the next five years," said Wayne Anderson, ACS president. "Without their ideas and insights, the plan would not have made such a compelling case for financial support." The grant will be available for various purposes, among them the gathering of faculty and staff from a variety of disciplines and areas. For example, some funds will be available for the next ACS women's studies conference, slated for spring 2002, thereby supporting a group that has been active for years without outside financial support. There also has been much interest in bringing physical plant directors together, but funds have not been available. Funding can assist this group in gathering to exchange information on building design, landscape design and energy conservation. Latin American studies is another area for which the funds may be used. Funds can help to buttress the embryonic ACS efforts to promote collaboration and pave the way for a coordinated or virtual program in this area. In addition, ACS expects to continue looking at the link between intellectual and character development among its students. Chief academic officers and chief student affairs officers have discussed this connection, and there is a prospect of future discussions. Participants are asking how and what role ACS can play in ensuring that students have an opportunity to develop intellectually and in personality and character while they are undergraduates. Collaboration between the academic and student affairs areas has been deemed particularly crucial in dealing with this topic. Funds also will assist with consulting and staff related to ACS activities like those in information fluency. Bringing in consultants with experience in designing new courses and programs and assessing student use of the new technology should prove to be very helpful over the next few years. This is the tenth grant that ACS has received from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in recent years, with other funding being provided for technology planning and training, an ACS virtual library, the current Global Partners international initiative, information fluency and other initiatives. Planning Grant To Expand ACS Technology Center ACS has received a planning grant of $146,500 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The grant will enable ACS to plan for a possible expansion of ACS Technology Center programming. "This grant will enable us to explore new and exciting technology initiatives, both on a consortial and a national level, with a unique opportunity to expand successful programs to a larger group of national liberal arts institutions. We also will be able to explore how we, as a consortium, can reduce the burden on IT departments at ACS institutions," said Suzanne Bonefas, ACS director of technology programs. In addition, The Mellon Foundation has expressed interest in exploring how three national technology centers, one of which would be the ACS Technology Center at Southwestern University, might work together to support a group of about 100 national liberal arts colleges. The second site is the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College. The Center at Middlebury specializes in foreign language acquisition and currently serves about 62 liberal arts colleges through the Mellon-funded "Project 2001" initiative. The third site has yet to be determined; however, The Mellon Foundation has expressed interest in funding a center in the Midwest administered by Associated Colleges of the Midwest and Great Lakes Colleges Association. Both organizations have received planning grants to determine details. Among other topics, ACS will consider how to strengthen its service to ACS institutions, how to expand the ACS Technology Center offerings to a larger group of liberal arts colleges how ACS might support information technology departments across the consortium, how best to involve students in ACS programming - perhaps by offering ACS technology internships - and how best to meet the needs of ACS members with a "mobile lab" to ship laptops connected via a wireless network to locations where meetings and workshops are being held. The planning period for the grant will run from January to July, 2001. Among the numerous workshops, seminars and conferences that ACS will offer in 2001, I want to draw particular attention to three of them. I mention them because they point to areas of particular emphasis within the consortium at this time. We want faculty, staff and students to be conversant with programs being offered that may relate to their own spheres of interests and expertise. We also are anxious to have solid participation from ACS institutions. Participants will learn from others and contribute substantially to the discussions that take place - possibly identifying creative ideas for future consortial activities. The first conference will focus on information fluency and will take place at our ACS Technology Center at Southwestern University. The conference will be held February 16-17, 2001. Those invited are faculty and staff who are participating on one of the six task forces organized under this effort, but others are also welcome. The conference will focus on how faculty and students use new technology in pedagogy and learning. Discussion also will be held on how one assesses teaching and learning in this new environment. The second conference is our ongoing Summer Teaching and Learning Workshop at Rollins College, June 5-10, 2001. This is an extraordinary program - perhaps the finest ACS offers - and we encourage faculty to take part. Not a remedial effort, this conference is for outstanding faculty who would like to be even better - learning from each other in an intense "micro-teaching environment." A third conference - to be held June 14-17, 2001, at Lake Forest College in Illinois - will focus on international programs. The focus will be on "best practices" in international studies, dealing with matters such as intercultural competency, pre-departure orientation efforts, re-entry programs after study abroad and training of faculty overseas program directors. Interested individuals are invited to talk to their provosts and academic deans about this conference. I ask readers to consider these compelling opportunities. Wayne Anderson Global Partners Conference On Best Practices The Global Partners Program is sponsoring a conference, Integrating Liberal Learning and Intercultural Education, June 14-17, 2001. The conference will focus on the unique perspective that liberal arts institutions bring to intercultural education and off-campus study. Approximately 100 participants are expected to take part in the four-day conference, at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois. Chief academic officers from the Global Partners Project institutions have been asked to identify teams of three to participate in the conference and to work with teams to identify a campus issue or project for which the conference resources and time with colleagues will be helpful. Teams may be composed of a mix of faculty, study abroad and international education directors, student life professionals or administrators. Dr. Milton Bennett, co-director of the Intercultural Communication Institute in Portland, Oregon, will be the keynote speaker. As co-director of the Intercultural Communication Institute, he develops and conducts intercultural courses and training sessions for universities and corporations in both domestic and global diversity. The co-author of the revised edition of American Cultural Patterns and editor of Basic Concepts of Intercultural Communication, Bennett has published extensively on intercultural theory and the development of intercultural sensitivity. Plenary sessions will explore the definitions and implications of intercultural competency and education for liberal arts institutions. Workshops will feature the best practices at consortial institutions. Discussion and team-planning sessions also will be a part of the conference. Specific topics may include internationalizing the curriculum, integrating on-campus and off-campus curricula, interdisciplinary models in intercultural competency, language instruction, reflective practices, orientation and re-entry, technology, service learning and internships, and assessment. Following the conference, Global Partners will offer challenge grants to individual teams or partner institutions interested in collaborating further to develop or disseminate integrated programs or innovative models or standards of best practices. Global Partners is a tri-consortial collaboration linking ACS, the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. For more information, please go to www.global-partners.org/bestprac/conf2001.html. Student environmental Leadership Training Workshop Twenty student interns from 13 ACS institutions attended the October 13-15 student intern training workshop at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas. The goal of this workshop was to enhance the structure and effectiveness of the ACS environmental internship program through leadership training. Training sessions included The Ideal Intern; Collaboration: Discovering the Strengths of Faculty, Staff, Administration and Students; Planning Projects and Activities; Outreach and Involvement and ACS Collaboration. Interns developed skills to stimulate environmental projects on their campuses and participated in strategy sessions in which they discovered ways to capitalize on faculty, staff, administration and student strengths. Additionally, students explored strategies for recruiting and advertising campus initiatives, and learned how to develop project ideas that appeal to their campus communities. By the end of the weekend, interns had developed a support network strengthened by an overnight stay in a simulated Third World country. The workshop was coordinated by Damon Waitt, ACS environmental programs director; Cindy Stokes, ACS environmental programs coordinator; and Kim Thurlow, former ACS intern coordinator. For more information on the ACS Environmental Intern Program, go to www.colleges.org/~enviro/students, or contact Cindy Stokes at stokes@colleges.org. Damon Waitt And Cindy Stokes Join The ACS Environmental Program ACS is pleased to welcome Damon Waitt and Cindy Stokes as the new staff leaders of the ACS Environmental Citizenship programs. Damon Waitt Cindy Stokes Sustainable Campus Development Clinic II ACS and Emory University co-hosted Sustainable Campus Development Clinic II in November in Atlanta. Teams from 14 ACS colleges, in addition to representatives from Agnes Scott College, Emory University and Oxford College, participated. The clinic addressed numerous campus sustainability issues including green building design, landscaping practices, recycling and energy conservation. Participants hoped to stimulate team building, provide opportunities to learn about "best practices" and promote intra-institutional collaboration. Keynote speakers included Dennis Creech, president of Southface Energy Institute, who discussed Building Design, focusing on environmentally friendly technology that is relatively cost efficient; George Bandy, sustainable programs manager for Interface Research Corporation, who discussed Sustainable Development: Implementation in Higher Education; and Darrel Morrison, professor of landscape architecture at the University of Georgia, who discussed Designing Campus Landscapes for Sustainability and A Sense of Place, featuring a number of landscape designs. For more information, including clinic programs, campus plans and a summary report, go to www.colleges.org/~enviro/workshops/SCDCII.html. ACS Environmental Program's Future: Emerging Features The consortium continues to prepare environmental plans for the future with some of the major features beginning to emerge. A centerpiece of the new plan is to create a number of alliances or networks through which interested campuses, faculty, staff and students will work together on specific environmental topics or issues. For example, the environmental planners within ACS see such alliances in the areas of: student engagement, campus operations, campus-community partnerships, faculty and curriculum development, spirituality and sustainability, and global partnerships. In addition, the consortium is thinking about cooperative efforts related to monitoring the environment in the region, linking environmental and economic development in the South, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and new service learning opportunities. Consortium planners also are hoping to continue the current structure of faculty fellows and student interns on all of the member campuses. These individuals are asked to serve as catalysts for the collaborative efforts taking place among the institutions. A special feature contemplated for students is an expanded set of summer internships through which students can acquire a first-hand knowledge of how environmental organizations work. Related to these experiences will be service learning opportunities for students, many of which may be overseas. Student leadership training also is anticipated; experiences may be offered to prepare students to be effective environmental citizens and perhaps environmental leaders in the future. Further ideas are sought from member institutions, as the consortium shapes and refines its plans and explores outside funding. Interested parties should contact Damon Waitt, ACS director of environmental programs, at waittd@colleges.org. New Study Abroad Pre-Med Program Offered Washington and Lee University and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have joined forces to enable students preparing for medical school in the U.S. to complete their required studies in a manner acceptable to the American Medical College Application Service while enjoying the benefits of a quality study abroad experience. Through the program, students will have an opportunity to spend a fall term at Britain's St. Andrews University. Students will complete a course in organic chemistry and will enroll in a course on behavior and health offered by the St. Andrews psychology department. The program will offer non-credit observational visits in clinical settings. Students also may choose from other science and humanities courses in the St. Andrews curriculum. This program is open to qualified students at all ACS institutions. The application deadline for fall 2001 is February 1, 2001. Applications are available through and must be submitted to: The Office of International Education, St. Andrews Program, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA 24450. For more information, contact William Klingelhofer, director of international at wklingel@wlu.edu. Birmingham-Southern To Host Latin American Studies Symposium Birmingham-Southern College will host its ninth Latin American Studies Symposium, April 6-7, 2001. Undergraduate students and faculty gather each spring to discuss issues related to Latin America. This conference has two main objectives: to promote undergraduate research and to increase dialogue among faculty members. Proposals for presentations are being accepted now. Undergraduate students may submit a one-page abstract for a paper involving original research. All topics pertaining to Latin America are welcome. Papers in English, Spanish or Portuguese will be considered. Faculty members are invited to accompany students to serve as panel chairs and discussants. Please send proposals by January 25, 2001 to: Barbara Domcekova, director, Latin American Studies Symposium, Birmingham-Southern College, 900 Arkadelphia Road, Birmingham, AL 35254. For information call Domcekova at (205) 226-4975 or e-mail: bdomceko@bsc.edu. New ACS Program In Latin American Studies Through the support of a Robert W. Woodruff Foundation grant, ACS has begun work on a new virtual department of Latin American Studies. A committee of representatives from ACS campuses is exchanging information about the current state of Latin American Studies on each campus as well as ideas about courses and programs that would expand current offerings and benefit students on all ACS campuses. The group will gather for a roundtable discussion at the Birmingham-Southern Latin American Studies Symposium in April. For more information, contact Teresa Wise, ACS director of international programs, at twise@colleges.org, or (404) 636-9533.
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February 15-16 |
Information Technology Directors, Southwestern University |
February 16-17 |
Academic Deans, Southwestern University |
February 16-17 |
Chief Student Affairs Officers, Southwestern University |
February 16-17 |
Information Fluency Conference, Southwestern University |
April 6-7 |
Latin American Studies Symposium, Birmingham-Southern College |
April 6-7 (tentative) |
Chief Financial Officers, Furman University |
April 20-22 |
Virtual Language Department, University of Richmond |
May 24-25 |
Academic Deans, Hendrix College |
June 3-4 |
Presidents Meeting, Trinity University |
June 5-10 |
Summer Teaching and Learning Workshop, Rollins College |
June 14-17 |
Global Partners Conference on Best Practices, Lake Forest College |
2000-2001 ACS Technology Fellows Selected
The academic deans approved the following technology fellows and projects for the 2000-2001 academic year, with ACS providing $2,500 for each project.
2001 ACS Summer Technology Workshops
The following technology workshops have been approved for summer 2001 and will be held at the ACS Technology Center at Southwestern University. More details and application materials are available at www.colleges.org/techcenter/workshop/workshop01.html.
Virtual Language Meeting Planned
ACS language lab directors and language faculty are invited to attend an ALIANCO meeting April 20-22 at the University of Richmond to discuss the kinds of collaborations they might engage in and the technical infrastructure and support system required for such collaborations.
ALIANCO is ACS's new virtual department of Modern languages. The three-year initiative will focus on strategic planning for technology in the modern languages and sponsor projects and collaborative courses in modern languages.
For more information, contact Andrew Ross, director, Multimedia Language Lab, University of Richmond at aross@richmond.edu or (804) 287-6838. For more information about ALIANCO go to www.colleges.org/~alianco/.
Birmingham-Southern
College
Biology Professor Wayne Shew received a $10,000 Science and Religion Course
Award from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. The award,
shared by Shew and the college, is part of the center's Science and Religion
Course Program. Shew was honored for his course, Initiating Dialogue
and Developing Understanding Between Science and Religion. The award
is earned for outstanding new course proposals.
Three Birmingham-Southern College graduating seniors have been selected to teach conversational English at Kodolanyi Janos Foiskola College in Birmingham's sister city of Szekesfehervar, Hungary. The seniors are Yin Ho, an economics and philosophy major, Lee Ann Massey, an English major, and Emily Cotney, a music major.
Davidson College received 47 laptop computers from the Duke Endowment in an effort to ensure that all students have the technology they need for class work. The laptops are loaded with Microsoft Office and are network ready. Students receiving significant financial aid are leasing the machines for $1 per year.
Furman University inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from John D. Hollingsworth, a textile magnate, who attended Furman University for one year and bequeathed 45 percent of his estate to the school. In addition to the annual profits of the company, John D. Hollingsworth on Wheels, Inc., the estate includes some 40,000 acres of real estate around South Carolina, valued at $400 million. David Shi, Furman University's president, said the money will be used for scholarships, professorships and maintenance.
Furman University received a $108,600 grant from The Rockefeller Brothers Fund of New York City to help fund a long-term study of water quality and watershed management issues in upstate South Carolina. The two-year grant will support Furman's River Basin Research Initiative, a long-term project that will focus on the social, economic and governance issues that influence the future of water quality in the Enoree River and Saluda River basins.
A Hendrix College student, Ben Goodwin, received a Rhodes Scholarship. Goodwin is a senior majoring in mathematics. He is the sixth Rhodes Scholar from Hendrix College.
Michael L. Galaty, assistant professor of anthropology at Millsaps College, was featured in a recent issue of National Geographic magazine for his work at the Mallakasta Regional Archaeological Project in Apollonia, Albania. Galaty organized field operations for the intensive surface survey of the Apollonia necropolis and surrounding area.
Morehouse College received a $1 million gift from the Motorola Foundation to construct the school's new Leadership Center. The 70,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility also will house the economics and business administration department, the Andrew Young Center for International Affairs, the Emma and Joe Adams Public Service Institute and the Office of Career Counseling and Placement.
Ten Rhodes College students - many of whom were Bonner Scholars, a community service program at Rhodes, or Burch Scholars, a leadership program - traveled around the world during the summer of 2000, working to improve the human condition. Student projects included constructing a recreation center and free medical center in the British West Indies, conducting a sports camp for children in Romania and working as a Habitat for Humanity volunteer in Honduras, helping erect houses for victims of 1998's Hurricane Mitch.
The University of Richmond received a $150,000 grant from Dominion Resources, Inc. for its radio program, A Moment in Time. Produced and hosted by history professor Dan Roberts, A Moment in Time is housed at the university and airs on 100 U.S. public radio stations and around the world on the Armed Services Network. Some two million listeners hear the daily program, which delivers a brief history lesson.
The University of the South has added an Asian Studies major and a concentration in Women's Studies to its curriculum. The Asian Studies major will integrate the study of the history, cultures, religions, politics, economics and languages of Asia. The Women's Studies concentration will encourage students to investigate the historical and contemporary contributions of women in arts, literature and religion, and will analyze gender in relation to race, class and ethnicity.
Washington and Lee University has received a $390,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help develop the Teaching and Learning Resource Center at the University. The Center will support a junior faculty leave program, create a mentoring program for new faculty members, assist faculty in the use of new instructional technologies and provide support for faculty research and scholarship. The Mellon grant will provide funding for tenure-track faculty to take a leave to pursue academic research, and will fund a two-year pilot program for the utilization of new technologies and teaching techniques by newly appointed faculty.
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