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Ann Dean, assistant professor of English and director of
college writing, teamed up with Margie Fahey, assistant dean
of the College of Arts and Sciences, to bring together faculty
from USM and Southern Maine Technical College in a colloquium
that explores if and how higher education can meet the dual
goals of graduating productive workers and critical, engaged
citizens.
Dean and Fahey won a $5000 Trustees' Award for the Advancement
of Liberal Learning to support the colloquium, ''Critical
Public and/or Educated Workforce?'' The grant was one of three
Trustees' Awards granted in the UMaine System this year to
support faculty projects promoting the goals of the Life,
Work, and Citizenship in the 21st Century Initiative; the
other two were for $3000 and $2000.
The project calls for one colloquium this semester, held
Friday, September 13 at SMTC, with a follow-up one during
spring semester.
Dean and Fahey, with the support of SMTC administrators,
designed the colloquium to engage faculty from both schools
in a discussion of whether a focus on employability prevents
students and faculty from achieving the traditional goals
of a liberal education. In other words, does an emphasis on
developing career skills keep students from becoming critical
thinkers by limiting time for the exploration of ideas and
of world history and cultures? Another fundamental question
addressed by the colloquium is how students perceive the purpose
and value of their post-secondary educations as they move
from one institution to the other or make choices between
institutions.
USM students do move between institutions, as well as in
and out of school as they balance education and work. ''Nearly
50 percent of USM's graduating seniors are transfer students,''
the grant authors state in their proposal, ''and a significant
proportion of those students begin their college work at a
local technical college.'' The authors also point out that
USM and the technical colleges share some adjunct faculty,
but heretofore, USM and SMTC have not addressed collaboratively
the issues raised by this project. The colloquium has been
endorsed by James Ortiz, president of SMTC.
Participants in the first colloquium session were asked to
prepare by reading materials including student papers from
both USM and SMTC, Glynda Hull's ''Hearing Other Voices: A
Critical Assessment of Popular Views on Literacy and Work,''
from the Harvard Educational Review (1993), and a selection
from Arthur Levine and Jeanette Cureton's ''When Hope and Fear
Collide: A Portrait of Today's College Students'' (Jossey-Bass,
1998).
Both full-time and adjunct faculty from both institutions
engaged in discussion during the two breakout sessions. The
focus of the first was shared concerns of USM and SMTC: student
preparation and common characteristics of students. The second
portion, organizers said, was designed ''to get 'like discipline'
faculty together to brainstorm future collaborative projects
between the institutions.'' USM departments represented by
faculty at the colloquium were Accounting, Engineering, Environmental
Science and Policy, English, Linguistics, Mathematics, Sociology
and Nursing.
Business and civic leaders were asked to serve on a panel
preceding the faculty discussion to add an off-campus perspective.
Panelists for the first colloquium meeting were Mike Wilson,
director of the Education Center at the Portland Housing Authority;
Mike McGovern, Town Manager of Cape Elizabeth; and James Quirk
from Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield. They framed the discussion
by presenting data and anecdotal evidence about the region's
students, voters, activists, and workers, and gave their visions
of the region's needs and the best responses to those needs.
Fahey and Dean said the overall goal was to improve communication
between the two schools and lay the groundwork for improved
articulation between them in terms of curriculum, advising,
and placement. A further goal is for participants to develop
their understanding of their own ideas, questions, and hypotheses
about liberal learning, and use that work to enrich their
scholarship and teaching.
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