2003 Event Details

 

New Faculty Retreat
August 18–20

In August, we hosted our first retreat designed to introduce new faculty to the liberal arts. John Agresto (Center of Inquiry), J.D. Phillips (Wabash College), David Neidorf (Middlebury College), Jane Jakoubek (Hanover College), and Charles Blaich (Center of Inquiry) organized and ran the retreat. Eighteen new faculty from Wabash College and Hanover College participated in the two day event.

The fundamental theme of the retreat was to ask new faculty to consider the importance of intellectual life outside of their disciplines. The retreat was built around discussions of a series of essays that were selected by the organizers.

The new faculty evaluated the workshop positively, and many of the faculty from Wabash have since become active in our brownbag lunch series and other Center of Inquiry activities. We shall continue to host this conference for Wabash faculty and faculty from other small liberal arts colleges. In addition, we are now working with several administrators and a representative from the American Association of Colleges and Universities to develop workshops for training individuals from across the country to hold similar retreats on their own campuses. For more information on the new faculty retreat, please see the following:

Reading for the Liberal Arts by Charles Blaich (PDF)
On Wounds and Healing by J.D. Phillips
Participants (PDF)

 

Negotiating Success: Workshops for Black Men in Liberal Arts Colleges
April 4–6, 2003

The Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College developed and hosted Negotiating Success: Workshops for Black Men in Liberal Arts Colleges, a unique meeting of Black men in academia. This event brought together 53 African-American male students (20 from Wabash) from 11 liberal arts colleges, along with 13 faculty or staff delegates from 10 schools. Students from Wabash’s Malcolm X Institute largely ran this weekend of "energy [for exploring] topics of concern to Black men in liberal arts," as one participant put it. The focus was on ways that Black students, both in historically Black as well as in predominantly white institutions, negotiate their survival and success in liberal arts colleges. Two institutions represented at Negotiating Success, Morehouse College and Tougaloo College, are historically Black colleges.   

Featured activities at the Friday–Sunday event included a keynote address by Dr. Lee Jones, president of the Brothers of the Academy, and a plenary lecture by John Aden, Wabash College professor of history. Students spent most of their time in small and large group workshops, discussing such issues as strategies used in achieving academic success, Black male identity development, intra-group differences and similarities, and the responsibilities of leadership (in the tradition of W. E. B. DuBois) at liberal arts colleges. The faculty and staff who accompanied the visiting students, and a number of Wabash College faculty and staff, led these workshops.

Each college team left with an action plan for institutional, personal, and community change, which should help guide activities at participants’ home campuses in coming semesters. Participants considered the workshops a success, and expressed a strong desire to continue similar, more expanded programs in the future. In workshop evaluations, participants affirmed how valuable they found the "brother to brother interaction" in discovering and sharing "effective ways to lead and learn."

Negotiating Success was the first student conference sponsored and organized by the Center of Inquiry. Among its most significant accomplishments for the students involved was the opportunity it provided for serious discussions, about a number of issues, with students from other campuses and other parts of the country. For many, the chance to talk about their own experiences on campus, and to hear similar stories echoed from other students on other campuses, was itself a cathartic exercise. Virtually every student made the discovery that "I am not alone in this," with respect to his struggles or successes. Many of the rewards of this conference, it seems, came from the reciprocal storytelling, and the opportunities that it provided for each student to reflect on his own behavior, and to see his own campus from the perspectives of others. This process of discovering confidence in one's voice constitutes an important first step in the dialogues about the circumstances of Black men at liberal arts colleges nationwide.

Agenda (PDF)                    Notes from closing session (PDF)

 

The Liberal Arts and Curricular Change
March 23–25 2003

 

Participants

John Agresto, Phillip Mikesell and John Ottenhoff represented the Center of Inquiry

Seven of the scholars were selected for their expertise on curriculum:

James Carey, St. John's College
Peg Downes, University of North Carolina-Asheville
Ron Herzman, The State University of New York at Geneseo
Steve Klug, The College of New Jersey
Walter Nicgorski, University of Notre Dame
Ronald A. Sharp, Kenyon College
Bradford Wilson, National Association of Scholars
Institutions

For this study, we wanted a diversity of institutional types and selected a large private university, a large public university, two liberal arts colleges and an experimental liberal arts program, the New College at the University of Alabama:

Joseph Losco, Ball State University
Paul Ranieri, Ball State University
Scott Moore, Baylor University
Donald Schmeltekopf, Baylor University
Terry Boychuk, Macalester College
Andrew Latham, Macalester College
George Sims, Muskingum College
James Hall, New College, University of Alabama
Ann Webb, New College, University of Alabama

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As a pilot project for supporting institutional change, John Agresto, Senior Research Fellow, and Phillip Mikesell, Visiting Research Fellow and Professor of Political Science at Wabash College, brought together educators engaged in changing curricula with scholars who have written about the benefits and values of liberal arts education. Rarely do these two groups come together and reflect on what is, after all, their common work. We brought sixteen scholars from fourteen institutions together for a conference (March 23–25), Liberal Arts and Curricular Change. We then selected institutions and invited them to send two individuals who were leading the institution’s efforts to change its curriculum.

The conference focused on two broad questions:

How do we understand both the nature and the value of the liberal arts in contemporary higher education?
With that understanding, how do we organize and implement our educational programs?
The conference opened with a consideration of the liberal arts. What, we asked, was the purpose of a liberal arts education? The discussion of the question was lively. Two foci emerged: one emphasized the intellectual-critical aspect of the liberal arts; the other spoke to the liberal arts as work with a substantive body of valuable knowledge. A good deal of attention was given to the question whether liberal arts work led to stronger moral character. The participants seemed to agree that the study of the liberal arts did not necessarily strengthen moral character. At the same time several participants argued that liberal arts study, by emphasizing self-reflection, critical thinking and empathy, seemed to point toward desirable moral qualities.

The second session, on Monday morning, began with more discussion of the purposes of the liberal arts. After about 45 minutes, we turned to discuss the role of curriculum in realizing liberal arts goals.

The third session continued discussion of the relationship between goals and the organization of courses. While this discussion was not highly focused, the primary point of attention (and contention) was the core approach versus curricula with more options. No one in the group supported a Brown- or Grinnell-like curriculum of no requirements.

In the fourth session we examined actual curricular revision plans. We heard from Macalester, Muskingum, and New College. Each presented a distinctive set of issues surrounding curricular change, but all three highlighted the difficult organizational-political issues of change rather than the questions of curricular goals and means.

In the final session we heard reports from Ball State and Baylor. In contrast to the earlier reports, these two focused exactly on the question of goals and means. Baylor has instituted (and is expanding) an elective great books core. It has a well-developed and articulated purpose and rationale based in Baylor’s Baptist tradition. Ball State, on the other hand, is considering a new set of requirements that will lead students to a new set of university educational goals. Reaction to these two reports was lively and focused squarely on the issue of the goals of liberal arts education and on the means of achieving those goals. As in the opening sessions (but now more grounded in real cases), participants divided between those who emphasized a tighter set of core requirements and those who saw liberal arts goals better realized through existing disciplines and somewhat less tightly focused curricular structure.

Contrary to our initial expectations, no "handbook" for curricular reform can come from these sessions unless it is something we put together with the conference simply as background. Nevertheless, two serious ‘outcomes’ do seem to have occurred. At least one of the colleges mentioned that what they needed was a faculty retreat to reacquaint their faculty with the goals and meaning of liberal education. They may use something similar to the book of readings we assembled as the basis of their discussions. Second, at least two institutions (Baylor and Ball State) were actively inviting different participants to come to their respective campuses to continue this discussion with their faculties and to work with their administrations.

Perhaps the most significant outcome was our recognition that institutions are seeking ways to improve the education of their students through changes in curriculum and ways to assess the outcomes of those changes. We have the opportunity to facilitate the process of such change at those institutions, by helping them to identify and implement changes that improve liberal arts education and by developing effective assessment tools. Working with such institutions enables us to test our theories of liberal arts education and to promote liberal arts education.

 

Religion and the Liberal Arts

Mar 20–22, 2003

James Davidson Hunter presents the keynote address.		Josh Tatum, Wabash '03, participates in the discussion considering the question, can one be liberally educated without having religious literacy?

Organizers:
Stephen Ainley, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College and Professor of Sociology at the College of the Holy Cross.

James Davison Hunter, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and Religious studies at the University of Virginia, providing the keynote address–On the Moral Purposes of Higher Education. [Click HERE for a summary of his presentation.]

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Phi Beta Kappa was the co-sponsor of this colloquy.
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For a summary of this meeting, click HERE. (PDF)

Participants:
Stephen Ainlay, Holycross College
Anne Bost, Center of Inquiry
Michael Beaty, Baylor Univeristy
Michael Birkel, Earlham College
Paula Brownlee, The Presidents' Group, LLC
Ed Chan, Center of Inquiry
John Churchill, Phi Beta Kappa
Mauri Ditzler, Wabash College
Margaret Falls-Corbitt, Hendrix College
Lucinda Huffaker, Wabash College
Richard Hughes, Pepperdine University
James Davison Hunter, University of Virginia
Stanton Jones, Wheaton College
Penny Marler, Samford University
Nicholas Meyers, Wabash College*
Esther Merves, Association of American Colleges and Universities
Warren Nord, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Julie Reuben, Harvard University
Mark Schwehn, Valparaiso University
Josh Tatum, Wabash College*

 *Wabash students who participated in the Saturday morning discussions.

 

Are the Liberal Arts Essentially Western?
Feb 6–8, 2003

Organizers:
William Placher, LaFollette Distinguished Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Wabash College, organized this colloquy.

Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago, presented the keynote address–Diverse Views of Diversity, or, Interdisciplinary Cross-cultural Eclecticism. [Click HERE (PDF)]

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Phi Beta Kappa was the co-sponsor of this colloquy.

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For a summary of this meeting, click HERE (PDF).

Participants:
John Agresto, Center of Inquiry
Anne Bost, Center of Inquiry
John Churchill, Phi Beta Kappa Society
Len Clark, Earlham College
Mac Dixon-Fyle, DePauw University
Wendy Doniger , University of Chicago
M. David Eckel, Boston University
Catherine Freis, Millsaps College
Rudolph P. Hock, Howard University
Werner Kelber, Rice University
Richard Lynch, Center of Inquiry
William Placher, Wabash College
Valerie Ramseyer, Wellesley College
Gretchen Reydams-Schils, Notre Dame University
Niall Slater, Emory University
William Spellman, UNC-Asheville
Raymond Williams, Wabash College
Lee Yearley, Stanford University

 

Colloquy on the Essential Content of the Liberal Arts
Jan 30–Feb 2, 2003

Organizers:
George Allan, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Dickinson College organized this colloquy.

David Potts, Historian, presented the keynote address– Content Contests on a Level Liberal Arts Playing Field (see press release).

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Phi Beta Kappa was the co-sponsor of this colloquy.

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A summary of this meeting 

Participants	Institution
David Anderson	Denison University
John Churchill	Phi Beta Kappa Society
Patricia Cook	St. John's College
Marty Eisenberg	Truman State University
John Frazee	MA College of Liberal Arts
Timothy Fuller	Colorado College
Philip L. Hall	Mary Washington College
Robert Hoyler	Randolph-Macon College
Richard Lynch	Wabash College
James Malek	Rollins College
Ellen Mease	Grinnell College
Donal O'Shea	Mount Holyoke
John Ottenhoff	Alma College
Dave Potts	University of Puget Sound
John Ramsay	Carleton College
Diana Schaub	Loyola College
Larry Shinn	Berea College
William Spellman	UNC-Asheville
Virginia Wray	Lyon College