National Network for Educational Renewal

Notes from the Arts and Sciences part of the Tripartite Meeting — September 18-19, 2009

Caren Town, from Georgia Southern, was elected to replace Leslie Wilson as the council member from the Arts and Sciences.

Discussion focused on improving the role of the Arts and Sciences within the Agenda and making participation from Arts and Sciences faculty valued at home institutions for departmental and college contributions as well as promotion and tenure.

The question led to a quick overview of past suggestions and past actions. Virtually everyone lauded the formation of the NNER Journal and hoped that it would become a strong forum for research conducted by Arts and Science faculty.

Conversation shifted to what new ideas can we offer to Arts and Science faculty? Robert Early from St. Louis spoke about going into the schools and teaching 6th grade students and using his college math students to accompany him and assist these efforts. Others comments talked about gaining support from provosts (utilizing some of the ideas imbedded in the TNE/Learning Network agenda that encouraged a broad range of upper administrative support. A suggestion from UTEP was to have the NNER drive initiatives that would be passed onto each of the settings. This approach might then gain the support of academic leadership at and beyond the dean's level. Colleagues from Brooklyn College discussed how their efforts in the schools were funded by money from the Gates' foundation and given institutional support at the provost's office.

A final suggestion was to spearhead collaborative research between Arts and Science faculty in different settings, to reach out to school partners in multiple settings, and to find avenues to publish this work to demonstrate that it can be achieved. Faculty discussed a conference/meeting that would invite funders, provosts, deans and other key personnel to Seattle or another central location to discuss the ways to get Arts and Science faculty involved in the agenda. This should also be where they would be able to support the collaboration between settings, faculty and teachers. To this end it was proposed that a directory or listserv be created to ensure better communications between Arts and Science faculty throughout the NNER.

Leslie Wilson

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