The Dog Days

It's that time again, "the Dog Days of Summer." I don't know where that phrase came from, but I remember it from my childhood as a way to describe the long, languishing, hot days when dogs would lie on their backs in the middle of the lawn and doze away the day. Otherwise known as August. In the capitol city we are anticipating the hiatus that will come when Congress finally succumbs to the pressure to get out of town with work either done, partly done, or undone. The city will languish and those of us still here will dress down and saunter to work. So, as we approach the lax month, where are we?


Its hard to say where we are, as most of the key legislation for education has moved forward in one body of Congress, but not in the other. For instance, the House is busy moving forward on ther reauthorization of NCLB, but the Senate has yet to act. The Senate has passed its version of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, but the House has yet to act. In the Senate version there is more money for students in the financial aid package, and there is a clarification of accrediation rules. On the latter, institutions are responsible for establishing what student success looks like in relation to their mission, and the accrediting agencies need to monitor that. Also, the institutions must be clear about their policies for transfer of credit from other institutions. The heavy hand of control has been reduced to the appropriate role of oversight. While this looks good, we need to wait to see what the House does.

The pressure, of course, is to try to get both the major pieces of education legislation, reauthorization of NCLB and HEA, passed before the end of the Congressional year. Much good work has gone into the reauthorization process, but if it is not passed and becomes law, we will have another continuing resolution, which leaves the old law in place.

The same is true for funding humanities issues. The House has passed its version with an increase for NEH and funding for Archives and Public Records. The Senate HELP committee has passed increased funding, but the full Senate has not voted, yet. Here is the full update from the National Humanities Alliance.

The good news is that both bodies are working to move legislation forward, and they feel the heat of summer's breath on their necks. With that, we hope the dog days of summer will provide the respite and lassitude to prepare us for the needed burst of energy to make the fall productive.

National Humanities Alliance Convention

I have mentioned in recent blogs that the National Humanities Alliance annual meeting and Humanties Advocacy Day would be held on March 26-27, 2007, the Monday and Tuesday after CCCC. While most of us were scrambling to contextualize the CCCC convention with our campus work and ongoing scholarship, the NHA meeting combined with Humanities Advocacy Day was a great success. The shift to holding the annual meeting in conjunction with the visits to congressional representatives worked very well. The discussions we had with humanities agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, at the annual meeting were good priming occasions for our visits on the hill the next day. Here is the report that the Associate Director of NHA, Erin Smith, posted. And, as Erin says, come back to the NHA site later to see more about the meeting.

March Updates

For those of you getting ready to head to New York for C's, hope to see you there. Cheryl Glenn has put together an excellent program, which you can access online to customize your own schedule. As you know from my reporting, assessments and accountability are high on my list, and there are sessions addressing those issues, as well as the multiple sessions addressing all our issues across the membership of CCCC.

The National Humanities Alliance has published its March update on humanities activities. You can find it here.

And the American Council of Learned Societies has just announced that their History E-Book is going to become the Humanities E-Book. All the details can be found here.

See you in New York.

Humanities Updates

The National Humanities Alliance has posted its December update on its site. Lots of announcements. And they have now posted the registration information for the National Humanities Alliance Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day. You can download the pdf and fax or mail your registration, or you can wait for the online registration form that should be up shortly. Previously, the NHA Annual Meeting had been held in conjunction with the ACLS Annual Convention, but this year NHA decided to hold its annual meeting in conjunction with Humanities Advocacy Day. Because the Advocacy Day has become such a good gathering time for Humanities advocates, this all makes sense.

National Humanities Alliance

The National Humanities Alliance publishes a monthly update on activities in the Humanities across agencies, institutions, and policy boards. The November update, composed before the elections, is a nice collection of news items from around the country.

Resources

In spite of, or maybe because of, congress heading back to the hills for the elections, there is a nice variety of stories from the National Humanities Alliance. The October update chronicles everything from congressional action (or lack of) to Center for the Book Literature Awards.

Speaking of books and libraries, another good resource is the American Library Association's Association of College and Research Libraries website for resources and discussion lists. If you scroll down the page, you will find many different sites that may interest you. For instance, here is the one for Literatures in English.

For those of you who have not yet found the Carnegie Foundation website, their Perspectives page provides good essays about our work. This month it is about opening up dialogue between student teachers, teacher educators, and supervising teachers to create a "sharing of wisdom" around the practice of teaching.