Announcement from Valerie Lehr
Vice President of the University and Dean of Academic Affairs

March 5, 2008

All,
Earlier this semester, the Teagle Foundation invited St. Lawrence University to submit a very brief preliminary proposal for a set of grants they will be awarding later this semester. The Teagle Foundation’s goals for these grants (up to $150,000 over four years) are as follows: “to develop models that demonstrate gains in student engagement and learning through processes of systematic improvement”; “to encourage the habit of using evidence to achieve systematic improvements in student learning”; and “to produce and disseminate knowledge about how colleges can best implement such processes on their campuses.”

In response to the foundation’s request for proposals, Kim Mooney, Eve Stoddard, Kirk Fuoss, Christine Zimmerman, Susan Pankey, and I generated a preliminary project proposal that would engage members of the St. Lawrence community in systematically reflecting on the following questions:

• What are our institution’s curricular aims and objectives regarding diversity?
• To what extent are we currently meeting these objectives, and how are we doing this?
• How does accomplishing curricular aims focusing specifically on diversity intersect with accomplishing other curricular aims (e.g., critical thinking, communication skills)?
• What steps can we as an institution undertake in order to systematically improve the extent to which we accomplish our curricular aims and objectives related to diversity?

  We focused this project on our diversity requirement:

1. we believe that we want to maintain it, but have a sense that it needs more precise definition;
2. we require more than one course now, and could envision using this course sequence in a developmental way;
3. there is evidence that thinking about diversity and overall cognitive development are related.

The Teagle Foundation responded positively to St. Lawrence’s preliminary proposal and invited us to submit a full proposal by the end of this month. While some of the most general aspects of the project have already been determined, a great deal of latitude remains regarding the specific nature and direction of the project we will ultimately propose.

We invite all faculty and staff to join in the process of shaping this project by participating in either of two open planning sessions. The first open planning session will be held on Friday, March 7 from 1:30 – 3:00 p.m. in the Monaco Room (Student Center 242), and the second session will be held on Friday, March 14 from 1:00 – 2:00 in the CTL. Participation in these sessions does not necessarily commit you to participation in the grant project itself, should our proposal be funded. By the same token, if our project is funded, it will almost certainly involve faculty and staff who will be unable to make either of these two open planning sessions. Our current goal is simply to solicit as much input as possible from as many sources as possible such that the project proposal the University submits later this month accurately reflects our institutional will.

A copy of the brief preliminary proposal we submitted to the Teagle Foundation can be found here. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or any of the other individuals working on this grant proposal.
Val