Elon University has taken several steps in support of a national campaign to advance liberal arts and sciences at colleges and universities.
Elon and nearly 500 other colleges and universities have joined in an unprecedented national effort coordinated by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) to advance liberal education. The Presidents’ Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning (Presidents CALL) seeks to increase pubic understanding of liberal education and to foster a societal commitment to providing a quality liberal education to every college student, regardless of the student’s field of study.
In signing the CALL statement, Elon President Leo M. Lambert pledged to speak out on the benefits of a 21st century liberal arts education and the practices and programs that will help every student achieve this kind of education. “Elon has put new investments in the liberal arts and sciences at the center of its long-range strategic plan, NewCentury@Elon,” Lambert says. “Our strong core programs in these areas allow students to develop as critical thinkers dedicated to life-long learning.”
At Elon, several initiatives in the NewCentury@Elon strategic plan will advance arts and sciences programs.
- New investments in programs and personnel are being made to strengthen the liberal arts and sciences environment at Elon. Among the investments are increased spending on library resources, more full-time faculty positions, enhanced academic opportunities for top students and revisions in the General Studies program.
- The Academic Village, a new complex of living-learning facilities, is under development, providing a second center for liberal arts programs on campus as well as residence hall space for students and faculty who will live and study together. The first two pavilions and an outdoor amphitheatre opened in August, and plans call for a total of nine academic buildings surrounding a central lawn, including office areas for liberal arts departments and innovative classroom , lab and seminar spaces.
- In response to the increasing academic credentials of incoming students, Elon has created 40 prestigious Honors Fellows scholarships and the Elon College Fellows program, supporting 60 outstanding students in the sciences, arts and humanities, and social sciences. This initiative will attract more students to major in arts and sciences and serve students with the highest academic credentials.
- The main floor of Alamance Building has been remodeled to provide a prominent location at the center of campus for the office of the dean of Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences.
As part of its 10-year accreditation study for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Elon conducted a focus report on the centrality of the arts and sciences. Faculty, staff and students from across the campus produced a report and developed a plan of action to communicate the value of the liberal arts, to define the place of the liberal arts in the curriculum and to provide adequate resources to support faculty development and facilities for the arts and sciences.
New publications and Web sites have been developed to promote arts and sciences majors and give prominence to those programs.
President Lambert has included strong messages in support of the liberal art and sciences in speeches and university publications. At the fall 2002 opening convocation, Lambert told new students that “an Elon education is structured in such a way that each student, no matter what his or her major, is grounded in a great liberal arts tradition. Lambert said that the most important aspect of students’ undergraduate education at Elon is the foundational knowledge they acquire, they skills they hone, and the dispositions they cultivate through exposure to the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences.
The university is making a formal application for a Phi Beta Kappa chapter, and is benchmarking indicators of quality in the arts and sciences against selected Phi Beta Kappa institutions. Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s leading advocate for undergraduate arts and sciences education.
In addition to college presidents from around the country, several national organizations are also supporting the campaign, including the American Association of Higher Education; American Association of University Professors; Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Campus Compact, Educational Testing Service, the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts (Wabash College), and the American Conference of Academic Deans.
The participants in this campaign – presidents of colleges of all types: two year and four-year, small and large, public and private – agree that the education approach “that best serves individuals, our globally engaged democracy, and an innovating economy is liberal education. The aims of a 21st century liberal education include:
- developing intellectual and ethical judgment;
- expanding cultural, societal, and scientific horizons;
- cultivating democratic and global knowledge and engagement; and
- preparation for work in a dynamic and rapidly evolving economy.
A copy of the text of the CALL and a list of those presidents and educational leaders who have already signed on is available at www.aacu-edu.org.
For more on the liberal arts at Elon, visit the Web site for Elon College, the College of Arts and Sciences, at www.elon.edu/elon_college.