Dispatch from DC

Welcome back to the new term. Or, as Emerson says in “The American Scholar,” “I greet you on the re-commencement of our literary year.” There is a peaceful, albeit warm and muggy, lassitude about DC in August. All the major players are on vacation or back in their home territories, and the streets, sights, and restaurants are relaxingly taking care of those of us who remain with the tourists to enjoy the city.

Labor Day changes all that. Once again, ties and coats replace open shirts. Business skirts and jackets replace slacks and blouses or summer dresses. Dark blue and black becomes the color of the day. We walk between meetings with serious intensity, no longer wandering over to the pond to watch the ducks. Business calls, and we answer.

With the return to work come the updates and notices to get us started—kind of like a close look at the syllabus. I have always understood a syllabus in the hands of a good teacher, like a recipe in the hands of a good cook, as a suggested journey, and it may include some interesting digressions and variances along the way; but it will inevitably lead to a dish that delights, surprises, and educates both cook and partakers. The mixing of metaphors was deliberate, and may show that I am not the cook I imagine. Therefore, the updates and an attempt at a syllabus—remember to season to taste:

National Humanities Alliance

Every month the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), of which we are a member, issues an update. Here is September’s: https://mail2.cni.org/lists/nha-announce/Message/20189.html. For the yearly syllabus, there is a change in the date of the NHA annual membership meeting. Previously, the annual meeting has been held in conjunction with the ACLS annual meeting in May, but this year the NHA will hold its annual membership meeting in conjunction with Humanities Advocacy Day, March 19-20, 2007. While many of you will probably be in New York the preceding week for the CCCC Annual Convention, if you are in the area, the NHA meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day are great opportunities to address concerns for academic humanities and to advocate for humanities support from Congress. One of the advantages of having a DC-based office is that I can become more involved in NHA work, and I am on the planning committee for the NHA meeting next spring. Feel free to contact me if you have ideas for speakers. Because of the close alliance between NHA and ACLS, there will be a session or two of NHA sponsored events at the ACLS meeting as well.

American Council of Learned Societies

Speaking of the ACLS, their annual meeting next May will be in Montreal, May 10-12. For those of you (like me) who do not do much international travel, remember that you will need a passport to enter Canada, so if you are planning on the ACLS, you might want to start that process. But the big news for ACLS, as Patti Stock, our ACLS delegate, and I have mentioned before, is the expansion of their fellowship program. They have expanded some existing fellowships, and added new ones, particularly in technology. You can also see a report on last spring’s convention on their site.

The Spellings’ Commission

The full title is “A National Dialogue: The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education.” The Commission has published the final working draft of the report, and will deliver the final copy to the Secretary of Education on September 25, 2006. Already there are various rumblings about the report, with responses I have already referred to in previous blogs (see below). An interesting new development, however, is the response to the announcement that DOE will use its rule-making meetings to implement some of the report’s findings. That brought a response from members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions saying that most of the recommendations would require legislative action. This might be one of those interesting digressions in the syllabus.

AAUP Statement on Adjuncts

The American Association of University Professors is preparing to vote on adding recommendations for part-time faculty appointments as an addition to “Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure.” As reported in Inside Higher Education, this places the issue on the agenda for the year. The AAUP invites comments on its draft that will be voted on at its annual meeting next spring. The AAUP is also sponsoring a “Dialogue on Contingent Faculty” with other Washington, DC based higher education groups on November 17, 2006. More on this when I know more.

The “not quite” Syllabus

What we have before us is more of a reading list than a syllabus. We may have been able to get by with that in the 20th century, but we will need to get used to our syllabi containing clearly stated outcomes in the 21st century. Here is a start:

Outcome 1: By the end of the literary year, we will have clearly articulated the humanities values in English and language arts studies at all levels of education.
Outcome 2: By the end of the literary year, we will have a clear plan to articulate our proposals for the future of higher education in English studies.
Outcome 3: By the end of the literary year, we will have helped shape the beginnings of a national policy for all faculty appointments in the academic workforce.

While I am being somewhat facetious in stating outcomes, I am serious on the issues. We need to reassert the fundamental human values of the work we do at all levels. We need to clarify how we can improve learning results at all levels, and higher education’s role in that. And we need to address the state of the faculty who teach all of our courses.

Looks like good work before us.