The Periclean Progress E-Newsletter

Volume 4, Issue 3 – November 2007

The Periclean Progress is a publication of Project Pericles, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that encourages and facilitates commitments by colleges and universities to include education for social responsibility and participatory citizenship as an essential part of their educational programs, in the classroom, on the campus, and in the community.

National Office Announcements

D4D Student Leaders to Present Original Legislative Proposals: On April 3 and 4, 2008, Project Pericles will be hosting the 2008 Debating for Democracy (D4D) National Event in New York City for student leaders from each of the Periclean colleges and universities. The event will consist of workshops, keynote addresses, panel discussions, and a series of "legislative hearings".

Unlike "mock hearings" that frequently occur at high schools and colleges, students will be asked to prepare an original legislative proposal related to a pressing public policy issue. Six students will be selected to present an original legislative proposal to a "legislative committee" of well-known former elected officials.

Project Pericles will provide an award to the D4D chapter at the college that submits the best legislative proposal as determined by a legislative committee of former elected officials. The D4D chapter can use this award to fund advocacy and education activities including lobbying trips and workshops. Official guidelines for the legislative proposal and the event are available here.

The Presidents' Council Annual Meeting: At this meeting on December 12, Periclean Presidents will share their perspectives on the development, implementation, and support of civic engagement on their campuses. Project Pericles extends its thanks to the Teagle Foundation for hosting this meeting.

Periclean News

Hendrix Professor Named Professor of the Year: Project Pericles Program Director Jay Barth, Associate Professor of Politics at Hendrix College, was selected as Arkansas' Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He received this award on November 15 in Washington, D.C. along with the other state winners and was additionally recognized by members of Arkansas's congressional delegation. "Reflecting on our collegiate days, we can all remember a professor who challenged us, motivated us, and who above everything else created in us a sense of true discovery through education," Hendrix President J. Timothy Cloyd said. "For literally hundreds of Hendrix College graduates, Jay Barth has been that professor."

Eugene M. Lang Speaks at College Convention 2008: From November 28 to December 1, college and high school students from all over America gathered at the Radisson Center of New Hampshire for College Convention 2008. There was a full agenda of policy-driven and issue-oriented sessions featuring important elected officials and renowned experts. Governor John Lynch (D-NH), Michele Perkins, President of New England College, and Eugene M. Lang, Founder of Project Pericles, provided opening remarks at the event. In his remarks, Eugene M. Lang said, "Together, all of you represent the responsibilities and objectives of higher education. And, among these responsibilities and objectives is the need to reawaken undergraduate education to its primary responsibility of preparing all students, regardless of academic discipline or career interest, for socially responsible, thoughtful, participatory citizenship." The convention was organized by New England College.

Berea College Named Top Environmental College: On October 29, Sierra, the bi-monthly periodical of the nonprofit Sierra Club, announced its list of the 10 greenest colleges in the U.S. Berea College was named the 7th greenest college. Berea College is perhaps best known for its Ecovillage, a housing complex for students that incorporates passive-solar design elements, heavy-duty insulation, efficient appliances and fixtures, and rainwater collection.

St. Mary's Students Shift Into Gear: On November 2, 2007, thousands of young adults converged on Washington, D.C. for Power Shift 2007, the first national youth summit dedicated to solving the climate crisis. Forty-eight students from St. Mary's College of Maryland attended Powershift-- 2.6% of their entire student body. Five students from St. Mary's stayed for Lobby Day, during which they lobbied members of Congress to develop comprehensive solutions to the climate crisis.

President's Corner

Allegheny College President Richard J. Cook invited institutions of higher education nationwide to join Allegheny in a democracy-strengthening initiative with the goal of ending the practice by political candidates of holding closed meetings on college campuses. Cook invited leaders in higher education to join the "Soapbox Alliance," a coalition of institutions that either have an open-event policy or have pledged to work toward the goal of establishing an open-event policy by September 1, 2008.

A web site, www.soapboxalliance.org, was also launched to provide information about the Alliance. The idea of encouraging other colleges to band together in order to strengthen the impact of such policies -- and potentially end the practice of hosting closed campaign events on campuses altogether -- was first described in a perspective piece by Allegheny Professor Dan Shea that was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in August 2006. Professor Shea said, "In the end it boils down to this: Closed, ticketed events are inconsistent with the mission of higher education and with the spirit of democracy."

Bates College President Elaine Tuttle Hansen was elected to the Board of Trustees at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Washington, D.C., on November 16.

Widener University President James T. Harris has been appointed to the American Council on Education Commission on the Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity. Harris is the sole representative from Pennsylvania on the Commission, which consists of 38 presidents from colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Periclean Focus: Global Civic Engagement Programs for Students and Faculty

In 2006, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) published the book, Assessing Global Learning. The report was designed to help colleges and universities "construct and assess the impact of multiple, well-defined, developmental pathways through which students can acquire global learning." Based on the book, we decided the Periclean Focus should focus this month on "pathways" to global learning at Periclean colleges.

Each year, Chatham University's Global Focus Program selects a country for a year-long study on campus, partnerships with international community present in Pittsburgh for local cultural interactions, and ultimately a Chatham Abroad course in the spring. 2007-08 is the Year of Germany and Chatham has worked closely with Pittsburgh's large German and German-American community on education, cultural, and political programs. Chatham is offering a semester-long course called "Contemporary Germany", and in the May term there will be a faculty-led seminar entitled "Germany in a Dynamic Europe".

Two classes of Periclean scholars at Elon University will host "Footprints in Africa", a five-day series of events aimed at making Elon students more informed global citizens. The series, which ran from November 27 through December 1, culminates with a talk by Anita Issacs, an HIV/AIDS activist from Namibia featured in a documentary filmed by a Periclean Scholars class. Issacs was recently named one of 14 recipients of the World YWCA Women Leading Change Award.

Eight members of Elon University's Periclean Scholars Class of 2008 and two faculty advisors will spend January in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico as a culmination of their three years of study on the region and the struggle of its indigenous inhabitants. The students have raised $15,000 for the renovation of an autonomous school which will allow indigenous students to learn about their culture and heritage in their native language. The Periclean Scholars will work closely with their partners at Schools for Chiapas.

Hampshire College's international exchange programs offer students opportunities for academic study as well as civic engagement. In China this has included projects involving AIDS afflicted communities; in Germany, ethnographic field research on issues of identity and integration among Turkish women who are first- and second-generation residents of Berlin (this student has since been awarded a Fulbright to continue her research); in Cuba, work with the Office of the Historian in the documentation and urban revitalization of Old Havana; in South Africa, HIV education both amongst university peers and in villages surrounding Durban; and in Nicaragua, where currently a student is working with at-risk youth and their families through a gang and drug prevention project with 11-16 year-olds.

Pace University History Professors Dr. Ronald K. Frank and Dr. Joseph T. Lee and the Cultural Restoration Tourism Project (CRTP), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, organized a 3-week service-learning trip to Mongolia and China. The trip combined an academic focus on Tibetan Buddhism in Inner Asia with public history research and community outreach in a cross-cultural setting.

Pace University Professor Dr. Satish Kolluri recently offered a course entitled "Global Citizenship in Action: Understanding Development Communication in India" that helped students grasp the complex and culturally diverse developmental realities of India. As part of the course, students traveled to India for a month-long community-based learning experience that provided active engagement with rural communities in the southern Indian States of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Pace students studied and worked in conjunction with the University of Hyderabad and the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology, Bangalore, on community radio and video projects.

Dr. Trevor Evans, Professor of Social Work at Widener University, led the School of Human Service Professionals International study expedition to Amsterdam in May. The trip was designed to familiarize graduate students from several departments with Dutch social welfare and social service systems. In conjunction with the course Comparative Social Work and Social Welfare, students met and observed Dutch social work practicioners, psychologists, counselors, educators, and students.

Zawadi Africa, founded in 2002, is a non-profit program that identifies exceptionally qualified young African women from rural and disadvantaged backgrounds and finds places for them in United States colleges and universities that are willing to provide these women with scholarships and tuition wavers. For each scholarship Zawadi Africa screens about 30 students and narrows the selection to six candidates to fill out applications to US colleges. Admissions offices at participating colleges and universities make the final selections. These institutions commit to seeing each student through an undergraduate degree, provide scholarships and tuition waivers. Donors solicited by Zawadi Africa provide supplementary funds, for testing, airfare, and startup fees (for books and warm clothing, for example). Students work on campus and pay for their own incidentals, making the program self-sufficient. Berea College is among the colleges and universities that partner with and/or have enrolled Zawadi Africa students. For more information, visit the Zawadi Africa website here.

Website of the Month

LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere--even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books and comes up with suggestions for what to read next. LibraryThing is a full-powered cataloging application, searching the Library of Congress, all five national Amazon sites, and more than 80 world libraries. You can edit your information, search and sort it, "tag" books with your own subjects, or use the Library of Congress and Dewey systems to organize your collection.

Resources and Publications

The Brick Awards, an annual program of Do Something, honor young people (age 25 and under) in the United States and Canada for their efforts to address problems in their local or global communities. Nine Brick Award winners will receive a minimum of $10,000 in community grants and scholarships. Of those nine winners, one will be selected by a national online vote as a Golden Brick Award winner and will receive $100,000 in community grants. The community grant money is paid directly to the not-for-profit of the winner's choice. Visit the Do Something Web site here for complete program information, application procedures, and information on previous award winners.

The latest Rock the Vote young voter opinion research is available and reports that 77% of young voters are watching the presidential debates, compared to 64% of voters of all ages. To read the full report, click here.

The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse has a large selection of links and items that discuss international service-learning, as well as resource organizations. To learn more and tap into valuable service-learning resources, to visit, click here.

Conferences

January 23-26, 2008
Washington, DC
2008 Annual Meeting: Intentional Learning, Unscripted Challenges: Knowledge and Imagination for an Interdependent World
Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).

February 14-16, 2008
Phoenix, AZ
University as Civic Partner
PURL Conference

February 29-March 1, 2008
Indianapolis, IN
3rd Annual Conference on International Service-Learning: Advancing Research and Practice
Center for Service and Learning

April 3-4, 2008
New York, NY
The 2008 Project Pericles Debating for Democracy Conference
Debating for Democracy (D4D)

April 9-12, 2008
Minneapolis, MN
The 19th Annual National Service-Learning Conference
National Youth Leadership Council

June 12-14, 2008
Snowbird, Utah
American Democracy Project (ADP) National Meeting
American Democracy Project

October 25-28, 2008
New Orleans, LA
8th International Research Conference on Service-learning and Community Engagement: Reciprocity across the Scholarship of Engagement
International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE)

 

 

The Periclean Progress is issued each month during the academic year and is posted on the Project Pericles website.
To subscribe or submit Periclean-related information for publication, email projectpericles@projectpericles.org.

"CLAIMING THE LEGACY OF PERICLES"®

Periclean Colleges & Universities
Allegheny College • Bates College • Berea College • Bethune-Cookman University
Chatham College • Dillard University • Elon University • Hampshire College
Hendrix College • Macalester College • New England College • The New School
Occidental College • Pace University • Pitzer College • Rhodes College
St. Mary's College of Maryland • Spelman College • Swarthmore College
Ursinus College • Wagner College • Widener University

National Office
Executive Director: Jan R. Liss

Board of Directors
Chair: Eugene M. Lang

Presidents' Council
Chair: Brian C. Rosenberg, Macalester College

National Board of Advisors
Co-Chairs: Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker & Hon. Kurt L. Schmoke

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