AACU President: UB Developing Innovative Courses
December 10, 2012
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
In an op-ed in the Dec. 9 edition of the Baltimore Sun, Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, credited the University of Baltimore with developing new academic programs designed to help graduates adapt and integrate their potential for learning as their careers evolve. Schneider's piece, entitled "College Still Matters," was published following her Dec. 4 speech at UB, in which she helped its Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences kick off a symposium on the future of liberal arts and sciences at UB.
"[A]t the University of Baltimore and at many other colleges and universities in the region, faculty members are busy developing integrated, innovative college programs designed to graduate liberally educated professionals," Schneider wrote. "The last thing students need is a narrowly tailored education that may set them up for a first job, but not with the adaptive and integrative capacities to continue learning over time and to move from one job to the next as the global economy twists and turns."
She added: "While it is completely understandable for today's students and their parents to focus on how college will set them up for professional success, the future of our democracy also depends on how well we are educating future citizens. At the University of Baltimore, for example, students and faculty work with community partners to document local history, organize comprehensive interventions to reduce school truancy, conduct labor force analyses and economic evaluations, help design new products for small businesses, study the effects of urban growth on local ecosystems, and engage in creative writing and publishing projects with elementary school children. These activities, tied to students' learning in law, business, public affairs, and arts and sciences, strengthen Baltimore communities and provide practical, real-world experience that can give students an edge in the job market."
Read the op-ed.