Faculty Book Club
The Center for Teaching Excellence would like to announce the Faculty Book Club book for Fall 2009.
Our Underachieving Colleges:
A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More
Drawing on a large body of empirical evidence, former Harvard President Derek Bok examines how much progress college students actually make toward widely accepted goals of undergraduate education. His conclusions are sobering. Although most students make gains in many important respects, they improve much less than they should in such important areas as writing, critical thinking, quantitative skills, and moral reasoning. Large majorities of college seniors do not feel that they have made substantial progress in speaking a foreign language, acquiring cultural and aesthetic interests, or learning what they need to know to become active and informed citizens. Overall, despite their vastly increased resources, more powerful technology, and hundreds of new courses, colleges cannot be confident that students are learning more than they did fifty years ago. -- From back cover
Derek Bok challenges college faculty to do a better job of educating undergraduates. He gives us a historical view of the evolution of American undergraduate education, encourages us to think deeply about our curricula, both in majors and in the core, and calls us to pay attention to research on effective teaching methods. We won’t all agree with everything in this book, but it will give us much to consider and discuss in the Fall 2009 Book Club. -- Jackie Dewar, Director CTE
The CTE will be distributing the book to new faculty and will be hosting brown bag lunch discussions of the book throughout the Fall semester. All faculty are welcome to join in the discussions.
Tentative brown bag meeting dates:
- Mon, Sept. 21 at 3:15pm and/or Tue, Sept. 22 at 12:15pm
- Tue, Oct. 6 at 12:15pm and/or Mon, Oct. 12 at 3:15pm
- Mon, Nov. 2 at 3:15pm and/or ºTue, Nov. 3 at 12:15pm
To join the book club email list please email teachers@lmu.edu