The Periclean Progress E-Newsletter

Volume 2, Issue 2 -- September 2005

Project Pericles ® Announcements

Our Thoughts are With You: Our thoughts go to our friends and colleagues at Dillard University, as well as to the City of New Orleans and others affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article on how Dillard President Dr. Marvalene Hughes is handling the crisis; and Dillard has a website on hurricane damage information and ways to help. Relief efforts among our Pericleans are numerous and are detailed under the Advocates in Action section. We wish you strength in coping and rebuilding.

Program Directors Conference Update: The RSVPs are in, and we are busy preparing for our first-ever Program Directors' Conference at Widener University on October 17th, 2005. We'll have a busy day, highlighted by a welcome from Widener President James T. Harris, III and a lunchtime address by Pace University President David A. Caputo. Please send in your questionnaire about Program activities, and contact Heather Ohaneson with any questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Reminder: Early registration ends on October 17th for the "Civic Engagement Imperative: Student Learning and the Public Good" at the Academic Renewal Conference of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) to be held in Providence, R.I. on November 10-12. Project Pericles, as a co-sponsor of the Conference, invites attendance and participation of Pericleans and is arranging time for Pericleans to get together.

Student Opportunity: Here's a Washington, D.C. experience that really stands out from the crowd! Building Democracy is a semester- long internship program for students at Periclean institutions that combines academic coursework and networking, and devotes special attention to developing a lifetime of responsible citizenship. The early application deadline is October 21st for Spring of 2006. For more information, contact Mary Ryan, Executive Director of the Washington Internship Institute.

Fellowship: The Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowships and the Soros Justice Media Fellowships provide support for outstanding individuals, including lawyers, advocates, grassroots organizers, activist academics, journalists, and filmmakers, to implement innovative projects that address one or more of the Fund's criminal justice priorities. Applications for these Open Society Institute programs are due by October 14th, 2005. For more information, click here.

Award Nominations: The Gleitsman Foundation is seeking nominees for their 2006 Citizen Activist Award. The Award will honor individuals who have struggled to correct social injustice in the United States. The honorees will share $100,000 and each will receive a specially commissioned sculpture designed by Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit the Gleitsman Foundation website.

Established Website Seeks Good Home: The founder of www.CollegeVote.org, a website that was created to increase the political engagement of college students by encouraging voter registration, education, and mobilization, is seeking a person or institution to adopt the site, its files, and domain name at no charge, and continue and expand its mission--preferably with the active involvement of undergraduate students. Interested? Contact Kathy Goodman for more details.

Graduate Degrees for the Public Good: Interested in graduate school programs oriented toward the public good? Come to Idealist.org's Graduate School Fair on September 30th at New York University. For more information, or to find out about upcoming fairs in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., visit Idealist.org's Graduate School Fairs website.

Periclean Recognition

It's that time of year when various rankings are released. While we are all aware that ratings are open to critique and interpretation, here are some Periclean highlights:

From US News & World Report --

  • Berea College--#1 among Southern Comprehensive Colleges
  • Dillard University--#14 among Southern Comprehensive Colleges
  • Elon University--#5 among Southern Universities
  • Macalester College--#25 among Liberal Arts Colleges
  • Swarthmore College--#3 among Liberal Arts Colleges
  • Wagner College--#23 among Northern Universities

From the Princeton Review's List of America's Best Value Colleges--

  • Hampshire College
  • Hendrix College
  • Occidental College

From Newsweek/Kaplan's America's Twenty-Five Hottest Colleges--

  • Elon University--Hottest for Student Engagement
  • Macalester College--Hottest for Liberal Arts
  • Swarthmore College--Hottest for Intellectuals
  • Ursinus College--Hottest Freshman Year

Congratulations!

Collaborations: Rhodes College has joined Macalester College, Occidental College, and Swarthmore College as members of the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC), an organization of 62 colleges and universities that explores and promotes the use of information technology in the service of liberal arts educational missions.

Grants: Allegheny College and Hampshire College are part of "Improving Teaching and Learning in the Liberal Arts," a Teagle Foundation-funded project to assess student writing and other foundational skills, expand the involvement of faculty in evaluation planning, and create a database for the eight participating schools. Hampshire Dean of Academic Development Dr. Steven E. Weisler is program director for the three-year undertaking. To learn more, click here.

Periclean People

Presidents: On August 22nd, Pace University President David A. Caputo appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal program with Stanley Fish of Florida International University to discuss the role of universities in educating for citizenship. Citing Project Pericles, Dr. Caputo defended the ideals of civically engaged education, arguing for a blend of theory and practice so that students "not only learn about their political system broadly defined, but also have the opportunity to influence and impact that [system]."

Executive Planning Board: EPB member Dr. Arthur Levine, President of Columbia University's Teachers College, has announced that next July he will step down as President to focus on a project to overhaul education schools nationwide. President Levine will be featured in a live chat with The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 21st.

Advocates in Action

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Pericleans are taking exceptional steps to help the survivors. Offers to admit displaced students--from Dillard University as well as other affected schools--are universal, as are efforts to raise money for relief efforts, electronic bulletin boards of various types, and opportunities for reflection. A list of outreach efforts is posted on the Project Pericles Forum. Here are some noteworthy examples:

Assistance for Students

  • Chatham College is waiving tuition for up to seven students.
  • To replace clothing and supplies, Hendrix College has given department store gift certificates to enrolled students from the affected areas.
  • Macalester and Ursinus Colleges will allow enrolled displaced students to pay their regular tuition to Dillard University to help defray its rebuilding costs.
  • Widener University is waiving tuition for displaced students, and Widener's School of Law faculty and staff members have offered free housing for displaced law students from Tulane and Loyola Universities.

Assistance for Displaced Individuals

  • Hendrix is assisting the families of the current students from the impacted areas and is working with the local community to help displaced individuals who have arrived in Conway, Arkansas, particularly in providing meals.

Campus Events and Services

  • Elon University's September 8th panel discussion on the impact of Hurricane Katrina included participation by a displaced student from Tulane University now enrolled at Elon.
  • Stanford University professor Stephen H. Schneider, Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather, will deliver a lecture on the effects of global warming and its relevance to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina at Ursinus College on September 29th.

Fundraising

  • Wagner College has established a payroll deduction plan for employees to donate money to nationally recognized charities, and will match donations up to a preset level.

Service and Leaves

  • Hendrix College President Cloyd traveled with Hendrix's Director of Public Safety to DeLisle, Mississippi with two trucks of food and supplies, gathered and loaded by students.
  • Wagner College and Widener University are granting special vacation/leave time to students, faculty, and staff to volunteer with charities or governmental disaster relief agencies.

Do you have examples of Periclean-initiated actions that address issues of local, national, or international concern? Email us at
projectpericles@projectpericles.org.

Notable Program Activities: Campus, Classroom, Community

Campus: Pitzer College's Residential Life Project is being built in accordance with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards created by the U.S. Green Building Council for sustainable buildings. The planning and construction of the Project, which drew upon broad community input from students, faculty, staff, and alumni, is based on the premise that buildings developed using ecological design have a distinctive identity that communicates a vital sense of place.

Classroom: Elon University has created ElonDoc, a program that encourages and oversees student documentary productions on important social issues, offers screenings of well-known documentaries, and serves as a link between professionals and students. Housed in the School of Communications, ElonDocs projects involve faculty-student collaborations, with students taking on all aspects of the production of documentaries. In addition to documentaries by the Periclean Scholars Class of 2006, projects in production include a work on the Lost Boys of Sudan, an illumination of malnutrition in Honduras, and an update on Elon's civil rights series. The first documentary made under the ElonDocs banner, "Dying to Get In: Undocumented Immigration at the U.S./Mexico Border," by former student Brett Tolley, won the Best Student Film Award at this summer's Plymouth Independent Film Festival.

Last fall, Pitzer College Chemistry Professor Katie Purvis-Roberts taught Environmental Chemistry a bit differently. With funds from a Project Pericles Civic Engagement Course (CEC) Grant, Purvis introduced practical aspects of environmental measurement and analysis into the course, which in the past had covered only theoretical concepts. In the revised course, students examined how environmental degradation affects people who live in urban areas by developing and conducting sampling projects at two community sites – a steel plant and a high school subjected to heavy traffic from large distribution centers. Scientists from the local Air Quality Management District came to Pitzer to hear about the projects, analyze the students' choice of sampling sites, and discuss how to implement policy changes through the data. Inspired by her success, faculty at other campuses have contacted Dr. Purvis-Roberts to learn about developing similar courses.

The syllabus for this and selected other CEC grant-funded courses will be posted on the Project Pericles website.

Community: Fifteen Rhodes College students received Summer Service Fellowships, giving them the opportunity to design a project -- independently or with an established agency -- tackling a social issue in Memphis, Tennessee. For nine weeks, students received stipends, housing, meals, and guidance from program leaders and mentors at their agencies, while working on projects and reflecting upon their experiences. Organizations with which the students worked included the Memphis Dream Factory, Planned Parenthood, and the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence; several students worked on projects related to Rhodes' Community Outreach Partnership Center Grant. For more information, contact Marie Lindquist, Director of Leadership Programs at Rhodes.

Students from Hampshire College were among a select group that gathered in Arizona in August 2005 to develop a curriculum for the Patagonia Field Center, a project of the Bellows Foundation. Building upon the work of two previous student groups (which included representatives from Pitzer College), the students created a model for the infrastructure and curriculum of a semester-long field-based experiential learning project. A second curriculum gathering in Patagonia will occur in October, coinciding with a 10- day field study of the American Southwest by Hampshire students.

On September 23-24, Chatham College will train 50 community women in a program entitled "Ready to be Heard: Advocacy Training for Women in Southwestern Pennsylvania." The program, a 2 ½ day lobbying "boot camp" led by advocacy professionals who have successfully changed policy on both the local and state levels, will teach participants the skills of lobbying -- from identifying issues and appropriate offices to developing an advocacy strategy -- and will help them develop their own advocacy plans. Chatham's Pennsylvania Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy will then monitor the participants' efforts over the course of the 2005-06 legislative/council sessions. For more information, contact the program's author, Chatham's Periclean Program Director Dr. Allyson Lowe.

Innovative Initiatives

When a disaster such as Katrina occurs, how should a college work with its community to decide the appropriate response? Mindful of its institutional Periclean commitment, Swarthmore College solicited input from all constituencies, calling a community meeting and holding a collective brainstorming process. Nearly sixty people -- students, faculty, and community residents -- gathered in a "resource room" with walls covered with thirty-nine pages of e-mails with suggestions of what could be done to help. Notes came from students, alumni, and faculty, offering ideas varying in scale and theme. Recommendations included hosting displaced students--Swarthmore has agreed to accept fifteen students from the Gulf--as well as ideas for fund raisers and drives of all types, including a clothing collection and a Louisiana-style crawfish boil. Concerned for the education of children affected by the hurricane, the group considered ways for Swarthmore students to provide tutoring or some other form of outreach. Organizing a relief mission to the region during fall or winter break is a possibility, and a collection of stories from New Orleans about the events is also planned. Efforts will be developed, executed, and-- most importantly--sustained in the coming weeks and months. Pat James, co-Program Director of Project Pericles at Swarthmore, encourages anyone interested in receiving further updates about Swarthmore's relief efforts to e-mail her.

Resources

Involving young people in service is a key factor in helping to sustain and promote our democracy, but is this feasible for developing democracies? Innovations in Civic Participation examined this issue and prepared a document, "Youth Engaged in Service: A Strategy for Promoting Democracy," for the State Department. The ICP report illustrates how youth service programs are an underutilized but effective vehicle for democracy building -- not only in the US, but also around the world, including the West Bank, Pakistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa, Romania, and Gambia.

With all of the rankings coming out this month, you may have missed one with a bit of a different spin. The Washington Monthly College Guide departed from the usual variables, and evaluated schools based on what they give back to the country, measuring such features as national service and social mobility. Using these criteria, state schools and schools with little name recognition outranked many of the elite universities and colleges that typically dominate the top spots of the other college guides. With the revised Carnegie Classification effort that is also underway, this is another sign of a trend in revising how the impact of the college experience should be evaluated.





The Periclean Progress is issued each month during the academic year and is posted on the Project Pericles Forum.

"CLAIMING THE LEGACY OF PERICLES"®

Allegheny College * Berea College * Bethune-Cookman College * Chatham College *
Dillard University * Elon University * Hampshire College * Hendrix College *
Macalester College * New England College * New School University * Occidental College *
Pace University * Pitzer College * Rhodes College * St. Mary's College of Maryland *
Swarthmore College * Ursinus College * Wagner College * Widener University

The title "Project Pericles ®," and its embodiment in the Logo, are registered service marks of Project Pericles, Inc. All rights reserved.