01 - The Teagle Foundation

Improving Student Learning: Four EssaysTHE PROBLEMS FACING AMERICANHIGHER EDUCATION CAN EASILY BECOMEDISHEARTENING. HOWEVER, WE BELIEVEHIGHER LEVELS OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENTAND LEARNING ARE NOW WITHIN REACH.The Teagle FoundationANNUAL REPORT 2006

The Teagle Foundation ANNUAL REPORT 2006THE TEAGLE FOUNDATION'S INITIATIVES ARE ALL EFFORTS TO STRENGTHENAMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION AT THIS CROSSROAD MOMENT.contentstable ofPAGE 02PAGE 03PAGE 04PAGE 10PAGE 15PAGE 18PAGE 23PAGE 24PAGE 24PAGE 25mission and historyfrom the chairessay 1: at the crossroadsessay 2: building partnershipsessay 3: asking the right questionsessay 4: getting therefinancialsboard of directorsboard retirement, board officers, staffafterword

INTRODUCTIONmission and historyWE BELIEVE THAT THE BENEFITS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION LAST FOR ALIFETIME AND ARE BEST ACHIEVED WHEN COLLEGES DEVELOP BROAD ANDINTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING CURRICULA, ENGAGE THEIR STUDENTSIN ACTIVE LEARNING, EXPLORE QUESTIONS OF DEEP SOCIAL AND PERSONALSIGNIFICANCE, SET CLEAR GOALS, AND—CRUCIALLY—SYSTEMATICALLYMEASURE PROGRESS TOWARD THEM.MISSIONThe Teagle Foundation provides leadership for liberaleducation, marshalling the intellectual and financialresources necessary to ensure that today’s studentshave access to challenging, wide-ranging, and enrichingcollege educations. We believe that the benefits ofsuch learning last for a lifetime and are best achievedwhen colleges develop broad and intellectuallystimulating curricula, engage their students in activelearning, explore questions of deep social and personalsignificance, set clear goals, and—crucially—systematically measure progress toward them. TheFoundation’s commitment to such education includesits long-established scholarship program for employeesof ExxonMobil and their children, and morerecent work with organizations helping disadvantagedyoung people in New York City win admission to collegeand succeed once there. Finally, the Foundationis committed to disseminate widely the results of itswork throughout the higher education community,understanding that the knowledge generated by ourgrantees—rather than the funding that enabled theirwork—is at the heart of our philanthropy.HISTORYThe Teagle Foundation was established in 1944 byWalter C. Teagle (1878 – 1962), longtime presidentand later chairman of the board of Standard OilCompany (New Jersey), now Exxon Mobil Corporation.Mr. Teagle gave the Foundation a broadmandate, “to advance the well-being and general goodof mankind throughout the world,” mentioning manyareas of concern and possible recipients of its support.Over the intervening decades the Foundation haspursued many of these avenues, always, however,including among its grants the aid Mr. Teagle envisionedfor “institutions of higher learning andresearch,” and assistance to family members ofemployees of his corporation who were “desirous ofobtaining some form of educational advantage.”Walter Teagle graduated from Cornell Universityin 1899 and maintained close ties with that universitythroughout his lifetime. He served as a trustee from1924 to 1954 and made generous contributions to it.Reflecting Mr. Teagle's wish, the Foundation includesamong its directors a person nominated by thepresident of Cornell and another nominated by thechairman of ExxonMobil. The Teagle Foundation’sassets derive from gifts and bequests from Walter C.Teagle, his wife, Rowena Lee Teagle, and their sonWalter C. Teagle, Jr.02

INTRODUCTIONfrom the chairsixty-eight thousand American foundations, some$33 billion annually in grants, and headline news asWarren Buffet contributes over $30 billion to the Bill andMelinda Gates Foundation. The numbers are staggering.Why should those who receive this report find the relativelysmall but highly focused Teagle Foundation of interest?We like to think that part of the answer is its approachto philanthropy, what we call “knowledge-based philanthropy.”Our grantmaking is grounded in knowledge abouthow college students learn. The projects we support, inturn, are designed not only to benefit the grant recipientsbut to increase the knowledge of how to bring studentengagement and learning to a much higher level. That,webelieve, is the best wayto invigorate Americanhigher education.And that, ofcourse, is anothercompelling reason forthis report. There isgood reason to think,as the essays in thisreport show, that American higher educationis at a crossroad. In the next fewyears, it will either find ways to bringstudent learning to a much higher level, or the problemswith which it is currently confronted will become moreintense and more debilitating.This is not a purely “academic” matter. In theAmerican economy and in its civic and cultural life, muchdepends upon the vigor of higher education. “More ofsame” will not do, nor will repetition of old formulas. Asense of urgency about American higher education shapesour grant programs and also explains why this AnnualReport goes far beyond reporting on our grants and financialperformance. The four essays that follow all emergefrom what knowledge the Foundation is gaining aboutstudent learning and how to increase it.Having come to America from South Africa, I amkeenly aware of the uniqueness of the American system ofhigher education, both its strengths and its weaknesses. AsSol Gittleman, one of our trustees, has pointed out, theAmerican higher education system has taken on issuessuch as access for a wide segment of a diverse population,THE PROJECTS WE SUPPORT INCREASEKNOWLEDGE ABOUT HOW TO BRINGSTUDENT ENGAGEMENT ANDLEARNING TO A MUCH HIGHER LEVEL.accountability, assessment, “Big Questions” of meaningand value, and other “major issues that no other system inthe world addresses!” It is extremely important, then, thatthis system function well.The Teagle Foundation’s initiatives correspond veryclosely to these distinctive features of American highereducation. Our encouragement of appropriate forms ofassessment, the support for “Fresh Thinking” (includingan emphasis on the “Big Questions”—questions of meaningand value), the new model we are developing thatlinks colleges and universities to organizations workingwith young people in some of the most troubled urbanneighborhoods in New York city are all efforts to strengthenAmerican education at this crossroad moment.These programs are relatively new, and results are justbeginning to emerge. In time they will be rigorously evaluated.But even now we are beginning to see what worksand we are well positioned to see what might work in thefuture. There is much more to come.This report has once again been designed primarily asan electronic document. We have done that in part becausewe have little patience with lavish print publications;funds expended in this manner might better be used, in ouropinion, for grants. In addition, however, the electronicformat makes it easy to access the increasingly rich storeof knowledge and ideas incorporated into our website,www.teaglefoundation.org, and others to which we arelinked. This is the moment, if ever there was one, toexpand this knowledge and to put it to use. It is a crucialmoment for higher education and an exciting moment forall of us at the Teagle Foundation as we try to do our part.John S. ChalstyChair, Board of Directors03

WILL THE LONG PRIMACY OF AMERICAN HIGHEREDUCATION COME TO AN END? STUDENTS STUDYINGTHE LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES CAN ACHIEVEMUCH HIGHER LEVELS OF LEARNING.ESSAY 01 AT THE CROSSROADS By W. Robert Connor01

ESSAY 0101AT THE CROSSROADS:THE PROSPECT FOR IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNINGBy W. Robert Connorwhen the history of American higher education in the early twenty-firstcentury is finally written, 2005 and 2006 may well be turning point years, but inwhat sense? Will the story be that this was the moment when attrition in quality,the drift of students away from science, math, foreign languages, and other rigoroussubjects became evident? Gradually, America’s share of Nobel laureates andother leading intellectuals, researchers, and scholars declined. Employersincreasingly complained that recent graduates lacked basic competency in writtenand oral expression, quantitative reasoning, and disciplined habits of mind. Adecline in public and foundation support exacerbated problems of morale andaccess. Runaway costs combined with a decline in student financial aid made itever more difficult for talented young people to attend four-year colleges. Asthese institutions came to be seen as playgrounds for the rich, talented youngpeople of limited financial means were shunted into overburdened two-year colleges.Eventually public confidence was lost, and the long primacy of Americancolleges and universities came to an end.THE PEW CHARITABLETRUSTS RELEASED AREPORT SHOWINGTHAT 20 PERCENT OFGRADUATING STUDENTSIN FOUR-YEARCOLLEGES HAVE ONLYBASIC QUANTITATIVELITERACY SKILLS.THE YEAR OF DEVASTATING REPORTS: It’s not out of the question,to judge from what we have seen during this “Year of the Devastating Reports”:• A PBS special, Declining by Degrees, documented the slippage instudent learning. (www.decliningbydegrees.org)• Research supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts in The Literacy ofAmerica’s College Students showed that 20 percent of students in four-yearcolleges have only basic quantitative literacy skills when they completetheir degrees. This means that they would be unable to figure out if their carhas enough gas to get to the next gas station. (www.pewtrusts.com/pdf/The_Literacy_of_ American_College_Students.pdf)• The same study found that more than half of students at four-year collegesdo not score at the “proficient level” in prose literacy. This means that theyare unable, for example, to compare credit card offers or to summarize thearguments of a newspaper editorial.• A nationwide assessment of the literacy skills of US adults aged 16 andabove—the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL)—showed a smallimprovement in quantitative skills over the past decade, but no significantgain in prose and documentary literacy. (nces.ed.gov/naal)• The Association of American Colleges and Universities released a report,Liberal Education Outcomes, showing that only 8 percent of college seniorsqualify as “proficient” in level 3 mathematics as measured by ETSAcademic Proficiency surveys; only 11 percent of college seniors scoredas “proficient” in level 3 writing; and 77 percent of seniors scored as“not proficient” in critical thinking. (www.aacu.org/advocacy/pdfs/LEAP_Report_Final.pdf)• Derek Bok’s book, Our Underachieving Colleges (Princeton University Press,2005), documented similar problems in a wide range of areas including mathand science. (www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8125.html)• The National Commission on the Future of Higher Education, appointed bythe Bush administration, released a report highly critical of higher education,especially of its lack of transparency and accountability.(www.ed.gov./about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/index.html)*Asterisked titles can be found on our website, www.teaglefoundation.org .05

ESSAY 01 AT01THE CROSSROADS: THE PROSPECT FOR IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNINGA TIP-OVER POINT? These reports are not to be taken lightly, norshrugged off as applying only to weak institutions. Probe a bit and many of theproblems show up even in highly selective settings, though there they may takethe form of sloppy writing and thinking, coasting on past achievements, andglib alienation. Taken together, these recent reports are deeply troubling. Atbest, they point, as John W. Gardner put it when he became secretary of theUS Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1965, to “breathtakingopportunities disguised as insoluble problems.” A more pessimistic personmight remind us that complex systems sometimes reach tip-over points whenlong-standing problems become insoluble. Has American higher educationreached one of them?AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE: But another narrative is possible.Our imagined history may read like this:In the first decade of the new century, a sea change began to take place inAmerican higher education. At first the system seemed to be making littleprogress toward the goal of providing a genuinely rewarding college educationfor a large percentage of high school graduates, but gradually—ascolleges focused more sharply on their core missions and as the academicengagement and achievement of those admitted to college began toimprove—public confidence in higher education grew, and with it,increased support for student financial aid and for improved teaching.These results reflected a new climate on many campuses, characterizedby a reengagement with questions of meaning and value, and with thehistorical, cultural, and ethical roots of the persistent problems with whichAmerica continues to struggle. But another change was also important: forseveral preceding decades, a broader knowledge base about student learningwas being developed; as it continued to grow, it gained new attentionand respect far beyond the professional journals in which it originallyappeared. It was now put to work in many settings. One effect was thatcolleges and universities defined their goals with greater clarity andbecame more systematic in measuring progress toward them. This in turnmade possible successive improvements in curricular design and instruction,with increased student engagement and learning as a result.This new approach to educational improvement helped American educationincrease its international preeminence. Yet, some of the great institutionalnames of the past, such as [lacuna in the manuscript], resisted thesechanges and gradually found themselves slipping into obscurity. Theirdecline, however, was more than compensated for by the emergence of newleaders among the institutions and a greater robustness and confidence inthe system as a whole.Which of these narratives will it be? The answer is by no means clear at thispoint, but over the last year at the Teagle Foundation, we have seen three reasonsto think that it might, just might, be the second. And if so, then the liberalarts and sciences will not fade away, or end up cloistered in a few ivy-coveredretreats, as so many have feared, but can blaze the trail to higher levels of learningin every sector of higher education, here and abroad. (On the vitality of theliberal arts and sciences, see my essay, “Last Bastion of Liberal Education?”*)COLLEGES ANDUNIVERSITIES MUSTDEFINE THEIR GOALSWITH GREATER CLARITY,ASSESS PROGRESSTOWARD THEM MORESYSTEMATICALLY.SUCCESSIVE IMPROVE-MENTS IN TEACHINGAND CURRICULARDESIGN ARE NOWWITHIN REACH.06

ESSAY 01 AT01THE CROSSROADS: THE PROSPECT FOR IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNINGNEW GOALS: The first of these is the redefinition of the goals collegesare setting for liberal education. Over the past few years, the Association ofAmerican Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has discussed, with faculty andadministrators from hundreds of colleges and universities, the goals theybelieve are most necessary for today’s students. What emerges is quite a newunderstanding of liberal education, one based not on a list of traditional disciplines(history, literature, mathematics, natural sciences, etc.), but on a set ofcognitive outcomes. To be sure, the resulting list is headed by “knowledge ofhuman cultures and the physical and natural world.” But closely combined withthat goal are such outcomes as critical thinking, written and oral communicationskills, quantitative literacy, problem solving, ethical reasoning, and so on.(The AAC&U report, The Aims and Outcomes of a Contemporary LiberalEducation, is scheduled to appear in January 2007 and will be available atwww.aacu.org .)Individual institutions, of course, differ in the goals they are setting. But stepback from the trees and it becomes clear that this is a new forest: over the pastfew decades liberal education has been redefined as colleges have moved awayfrom “exposing” their students to certain subject matter deemed crucial to “theeducated man,” and aimed instead at ambitious cognitive and personal outcomes.This change is still in process and is contentious, but, in my view, it is nowwell rooted into American higher education, as it should be. If carefully nurtured,it will prove very fruitful. This little discussed shift sets the traditional disciplinesof the liberal arts in a new light, not as content to be memorized, but as means todevelop habits of heart and mind that will serve a student well over a lifetime.A NEW PEDAGOGY: Second, new ways to reach those goals are nowavailable. It was by no means clear at first that colleges and universities couldreach the ambitious new goals they were setting for themselves. Lectures, theold homework assignments, the traditional pedagogies of recitation, tests, andquizzes were never likely to develop the habits of sustained, active learning andthe long term benefits envisioned by the new goals of liberal education. Awhole new pedagogy might be needed. Fortunately, individual college teachershad been working for years to increase active learning and engagement, andresearchers had been rigorously studying what worked and what did not. OurFoundation and a few others had been encouraging fresh thinking and newapproaches. Much of this new knowledge, however, was fragmentary, scattered,buried in opaque professional journals or dust covered reports.Now that new pedagogy is within reach. While the title of Derek Bok’sbook, Our Underachieving Colleges, sounds almost despondent, its substanceshows the way to higher levels of achievement for students and colleges alike.Many in higher education have welcomed the book, using it almost as a handbookor guide to more effective teaching, and as a challenge to put into practicewhat many of us had known or guessed for many years.Bok’s book appeared just after Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrotea stinging op-ed indictment, “The Hubris of the Humanities,” (December 6, 2005)on scientific illiteracy among otherwise well-educated people. On a snowyFebruary day, the Teagle Foundation convened a seminar in New York City tolisten to Bok and Kristof, and to join in a lively discussion of what steps shouldOUTCOMES ANDASSESSMENT GRANTSIMPLEMENTATION COLLABORATIVESAgnes Scott College, Converse College,University of North Carolina - Asheville,Wofford College$300,000 over 36 monthsImproving and Assessing IntegrativeLearning ExperiencesBeloit College, Knox College, MonmouthCollege, Ripon College$297,109 over 36 monthsAssessing the Value Added to LiberalEducation by Academic MajorsThe College of Wooster, DenisonUniversity, Kenyon College, OberlinCollege, Ohio Wesleyan University$297,353 over 36 monthsCreativity and Critical Thinking:Assessing the Foundations of a LiberalArts EducationMoravian College, Drew University,Muhlenberg College, Roanoke College,Susquehanna University$300,000 over 36 monthsValue-Added Assessment of Programs ofIntense Student-Faculty Interaction:Developing Intentional LearnersReed College, Lewis & Clark College,Whitman College$292,218 over 30 monthsAssessing Classmate Peer Effects onStudent Learning: Statistical andQualitative Evidence for GatewayCourses at Three Liberal Arts CollegesFull project descriptions can be found on ourwebsite, www.teaglefoundation.org .07

ESSAY 01 AT01THE CROSSROADS: THE PROSPECT FOR IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNINGbe taken to strengthen educational performance.(An audio recording of the seminar is availableon our website, www.teaglefoundation.org .)At the end of the seminar, it was by no meansclear whether American education wouldchange, but it was clear that it could changeand should change in several important ways.At the Teagle Foundation, we are findingthat relatively modest interventions can make asurprisingly large difference, if the design isright. For example, “River Summer,” a consortiumproject funded through a “Fresh Thinking”working group grant to Barnard College, hasaffected teaching in almost every college in theHudson River’s large basin, produced a modelfor the study of other regions, and demonstratedthe effectiveness of some very practical ways ofenhancing student learning.These and similar approaches are notarcane mysteries intelligible only to those whohave the patience to wade through psychometricjournals. They are common sense measures,whose merits good teachers have long intuited,even if they have not always adopted them.Now there’s no excuse— they stand “in orderserviceable,” as Milton would say.ASSESSING STUDENTPROGRESS: Third, student progresstoward ambitious goals colleges are setting cannow be more systematically assessed, and bydoing so, colleges can determine what is workingwell and what needs to be changed. Thisopens the way to systematic improvements instudent learning. It also breaks the mold of theold end-of-class evaluation forms in whichstudents were asked what they thought of theassignments, the labs, and the classes in anindividual course. This could easily turn into apopularity poll, or a way of tabulating whetherthe classes were entertaining enough. Studentswere, in effect, being treated as if they wereconsumers of an expensive product or service,and faculty—especially junior faculty—couldfeel pressured to meet students’ expectations.The emphasis in the new pedagogy is not onwhether students like the professor, but on howwell they are learning. With the right kind ofcase studyWHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT STUDENTLEARNING FROM RIVER SUMMER 2005From the Adirondacks to the Verrazano, from Asher B. Durand toZebra Mussels, from geology to history to contemporary politics,“River Summer” took an integrative approach to understanding theHudson River in all its majesty and complexity. Could there be abetter way to study the river than to bring faculty from the institutionsin the Hudson Valley on a research vessel and let them sharetheir expertise?One of the leaders of the project, Stephanie Pfirman, Chair ofthe Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College, madea strong case for supporting River Summer. It was a natural for theTeagle “Fresh Thinking” initiative—grants designed to encourageinter-institutional collaborations that strengthen education in theliberal arts and sciences. Stephanie, moreover, knows whereof shespeaks—she grew up in Poughkeepsie, raced sailboats at theChelsea Yacht Club, and spent time in the Adirondacks. She majoredin Geology at Colgate, and then went on to earn her PhD from MITand the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Now she and hercolleague John Cronin from Pace University were ready to showwhat an integrative approach to the Hudson could yield.It yielded far more than any of us expected. Forty facultymembers from twenty-four schools participated in several modulesaboard the Research Vessel Seawolf. They learned a lot about theHudson, and many of them are now revising old courses and introducingnew ones built on the knowledge they gained. But they alsolearned a lot about learning—the importance of active learning, thegains that come from studying a subject in many different settings,the advantages of “spacing,” and other metacognitive processes.Their White Paper describing the project and its implications forteaching and learning is now available.Other White Papers on Fresh Thinking for Liberal Education areavailable on our website at www.teaglefoundation.org/learning/publications.aspx .For photos of the Research Vessel Seawolf and River Summer,see www.environmentalconsortium.org/workarea/projects/riversummer/photographs.htm .08

ESSAY 01 AT01THE CROSSROADS: THE PROSPECT FOR IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNINGassessment, it is possible to determine much more accurately what students reallyare learning. (See Richard Hersh, “What does college teach?” Atlantic Monthly,November 2005.)WHERE ARE THE FACULTY? It has been very exciting to watchcolleges and universities rethink their goals, try out new pedagogies, andexplore the potential in more systematic forms of assessment. This has mademe feel very optimistic that American higher education can surmount themany problems it faces and demonstrate that they are indeed “gloriousopportunities in masquerade.” As a subsequent essay in this report willshow, there are many steps that must be taken to bring student learning towhere it needs to be. In all this, however, there keeps recurring one naggingquestion mark. It frequently punctuates Our Underachieving Colleges, andindeed any discussion of improving American higher education: Will facultymembers take advantage of these new means of increasing student learningor will they drag their feet? I’m sure there will be plenty of the latter, butthe real question is a little different: Will faculty not just accept, or use whatis now at hand, or will they drive it?At the Teagle Foundation we see two strong indicators that something likethat is already underway. The first of these is the excitement and determinationof faculty leaders in over a hundred colleges and universities with which we areworking. (It is a delight to work with such allies!) For example, one of the leadersof a Teagle assessment project recently emailed me:The work we are doing provides us the opportunity to build our institutionstowards...a “learning organization,” utilizing these conversations [amongthe members of this Teagle collaborative] to consider how each of our sixcolleges can provide better and more useful data…for the improvement ofstudent learning. In sharing the results of our assessment work…we hope tofind a solution to the fault that Bok finds with too many college and universityfaculties, which, he says, “seem inclined to use research and experimentationto understand and improve every institution, process and humanactivity except their own.”The second indicator comes from the strongly positive faculty response to ourCollege-Community Connections program, which Donna Heiland describes inthe next essay. That response wasn’t imposed from above; it came from facultymembers eager to have more diverse and better prepared students.These indicators are incomplete, to be sure, but they give me confidence thatit can be done, and that although there’s still a long way still to go, the answerto Derek Bok’s question is, “Yes, it’s happening,” and the answer to mine maybe the same.GRANTS TO ASSOCIATIONSAssociated Colleges of the South,Associated Colleges of the Midwest,Great Lakes College Association$300,000 over 24 monthsLiberal Education and Study Abroad:Assessing Learning Outcomes to ImproveProgram QualityADDITIONAL GRANTS IN VALUE-ADDEDASSESSMENTCenter of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts atWabash College$300,000 over 36 monthsLeveraging Institutional Success toStrengthen Assessment atLiberal Arts CollegesCurb Center for Art, Enterprise, andPublic Policy at Vanderbilt University$25,000 over 12 monthsCreativity, the Arts, and Higher Education:Exploring How the Arts StimulateCreativity, Engagement, and Learning onCollege Campuses (planning grant)The Hechinger Institute on Educationand the Media at Teacher’s College,Columbia University$40,000 over 12 monthsA Primer on Value-Added AssessmentFull project descriptions can be found on ourwebsite, www.teaglefoundation.org .THE EMPHASIS IN THENEW PEDAGOGY ISNOT ON WHETHERSTUDENTS LIKE THEPROFESSOR, BUTON HOW WELL THEYARE LEARNING.09

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO HELP BRIGHT STUDENTS MOVEBEYOND WHAT THEIR HIGH SCHOOLS ARE PROVIDING?TEAGLE HAS EMBARKED ON A PROMISING EXPERIMENTABOUT COLLEGE EDUCATION.ESSAY 02 BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS By Donna Heiland02

ESSAY 0202ByBUILDING PARTNERSHIPS:THE COLLEGE-COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS EXPERIENCEDonna Heilandgetting from high school to college is more easily said than done, and sois earning a college degree. Just look at the data:• High school graduation rates in the United States break down along racialand ethnic lines: “Only about half of African-American and Latino ninthgraders graduate from high school within four years, compared with79 percent of Asian-Americans and 72 percent of Whites[.]”• Those graduation rates break down along economic lines as well: “Morethan 90 percent of students from the top two income quartiles graduate fromhigh school compared to 65 percent of those from the bottom quartile ….” 1• Graduating from high school is only the first step. Getting into and succeedingin college are the next two, and data from two elite universities(admittedly more suggestive than definitive) “show that although studentsof all races can be found throughout the GPA distribution, the averageblack or Latino student earns lower grades than does the average white orAsian American student.” 2• Finally, graduating students still show notable achievement gaps: “The typicalAmerican four-year institution has a graduation rate gap between Whitesand Blacks of more than 10 percent (in one quarter of four-year colleges anduniversities have graduation rate gaps of more than 20 percent),” while“the typical graduation rate gap between Whites and Hispanics is morethan 7 percent.” 3Put all of these dispiriting facts together with the reality of life in New YorkCity—where high school graduation rates resemble those nationally and thenumber of minority students in elite public high schools is actually declining—and you get the picture. 4 Not enough young people are getting the education theydeserve and young people of color, people who are economically disadvantaged,or who can be described as both are faring worse than most.“MORE THAN 90 PERCENTOF STUDENTS FROM THETOP TWO INCOMEQUARTILES GRADUATEFROM HIGH SCHOOLCOMPARED TO 65 PER-CENT OF THOSE FROMTHE BOTTOM QUARTILE....”*Asterisked titles can be found on our website, www.teaglefoundation.org .1See the Lumina Foundation’s discussion of “What We know”: www.luminafoundation.org/research/what_we_know/index.html . “Research-based Evidence Related to the Four Dimensions of Accessand Success,” “Dimension 1—Preparation,” note 1, cites the data in the first two bullet points.2See “Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in College Completion and Achievement: CurrentInitiatives, New Ideas, and Assessment” (www.teaglefoundation.org/learning/pdf/2006_cornell_whitepaper.pdf), the White Paper produced by a Teagle Foundation Working Group that includedCornell University (lead institution), Colgate University, Hamilton College, Hobart and WilliamSmith Colleges, and Wells College.3See the Lumina Foundation’s discussion of “What We know”: www.luminafoundation.org/research/what_we_know/index.html . “Research-based Evidence Related to the Four Dimensions ofAccess and Success,” “Dimension 4—Institutional Responsibility,” note 26.4New York City’s Department of Education reported an overall graduation rate of 58.2 percent for thecity, broken down as follows: 52.05 percent for Black students, 49.44 percent for Hispanic students,73.15 percent for Asian students and 75.51 percent for White Students (The Class of 2005 Four-YearLongitudinal Report and 2004-2005 Event Dropout Rates, pp. 1, 71-95; I have converted citywidecounts to percentages). New York State disputed the city’s overall figures, saying they were too high(Elissa Gootman, “High School Graduation Rates Unacceptably Low, State Says,” New York Times,February 14, 2006). The fact of declining numbers of minority students in the city’s three most elitespecialized high schools—Stuyvesant, the Bronx High School of Science, and Brooklyn TechnicalSchool—was reported by Elissa Gootman, “In Elite Schools, A Dip in Blacks and Hispanics,”New York Times, August 18, 2006.11

ESSAY 02 BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS: THE COLLEGE-COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS EXPERIMENT02Fully aware of this context, about a year ago the Teagle Foundation beganwhat we described as a “small experiment” that would do two things: helpyoung people from tough New York City neighborhoods be ambitious aboutimagining their college educations and disciplined about pursing them, and helpcolleges by providing “yet another way of contributing to the vitality of liberaleducation.” 5 That “experiment” was our College-Community Connectionsprogram (CCC), which links ten area colleges and universities with ten community-basedorganizations in an effort to develop rigorous and engaging academicprogramming for the high school students served by those organizations. Theseare largely students of color from underserved communities where strugglingpublic schools have generally not provided the challenging education theydeserve. Given this fact, how they are to find their passions, realize their talents,and live the rich, full lives they deserve is a serious question. One could easilyfocus one’s attention entirely on what is wrong with New York City schools andon the price we all pay when we do not cultivate the talent in our midst. Thatstory is both real and consequential, and yet it is not the one I want to tell.When I think about these young people, when I make site visits to the communityorganizations with which they are involved, when I talk with them, andsee the work they are doing with our CCC program, I am hopeful. When Iremember that every college and university we contacted about this programenthusiastically agreed to participate in it and committed significant faculty andadministrative resources to the work, I am again encouraged. More than encouraged,I am energized by the sense of possibility, of how much can happen whenwe—some of us, ideally all of us—not only give these young people a chance,but encourage them to be ambitious. For these students—like all students, givenhalf a chance—get excited about learning, do fine work, teach themselves, theirpeers, all of us. And we all benefit. That is the story I see emerging from our“small experiment.”WHAT DRIVES THE PROGRAM? CCC occupies an unusual andmaybe even unique place in the college prep landscape. There are a number ofprograms around New York City and elsewhere that link colleges and universitieswith high schools. There are also many after-school programs that supplementstudents’ formal education and help them on their way to college, providing tutoringin various areas, counseling about the college admissions process, adviceto families, and more. Duplicating such services would not have made sense,but building on them did. Our long-term goal is to help students prepare for collegeand succeed—indeed, thrive—once they get there, and one thing we knewgoing into this work is that rigorous, engaging, exciting courses during the highschool years do much to ensure these results. 6 We therefore invited colleges and5See Bob Connor’s “President’s Report” in the Teagle Foundation’s 2005 Annual Report:www.teaglefoundation.org/ar05/flash.html or pages 12-13 of the pdf: www.teaglefoundation.org/ar05/annual_101105.pdf .COLLEGE-COMMUNITY CONNECTIONSGRANTS FOR COLLEGE-COMMUNITYCONNECTIONS PARTNERSHIPS($25,000 OVER 12 MONTHS)Adelphi University and GroundworkWriting and Reading The CityBarnard College and HarlemEducational Activities FundHEAF@Barnard: A Pre-College ProgramColumbia University and East HarlemTutorial ProgramA Partnership between Columbiaand EHTPDrew University and Union SettlementAssociationA Partnership between Union Settlementand Drew UniversityFordham University and Citizens AdviceBureauThe History Makers ProgramThe New School and East Side HouseSettlementA Partnership between the Institute forUrban Education at Eugene Lang Collegeand East Side HouseNew York University and LeadershipEnterprise for a Diverse AmericaBeyond the WindowPace University and The Boys’ Club ofNew YorkOpportunitas in Action: Film, Writing,and Discovery of SelfSarah Lawrence College and Prep for PrepWriting for Life: Authenticityand ArgumentVassar College and Sponsors forEducational OpportunityA Vassar-SEO CollaborationFull project descriptions can be found on ourwebsite, www.teaglefoundation.org .6Again, the Lumina Foundation’s discussion of “What We Know” summarizes and cites relevantdata. “Research-based Evidence Related to the Four Dimensions of Access and Success,”“Dimension 1—Preparation” notes that “A rigorous high school curriculum is highly predictive ofcollege enrollment and success” (www.luminafoundation.org/research/what_we_know/ index.html).12

ESSAY 02 BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS: THE COLLEGE-COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS EXPERIMENT02community organizations to work together on developing such courses, and earlierthis year, the Foundation’s Board of Directors authorized ten projects. Theseprojects differ greatly from each other, but have one crucial thing in common:they all aim to capture the challenge and excitement that is at the heart of aliberal education, the process of revelation—or moment of epiphany—that happensin every good classroom when someone says, “I get it!” That excitementis unparalleled, intellectual but also visceral, hard to describe and yet crucialto create.Four of the ten partnerships have already piloted courses and the remainingsix will roll out over the next year. While we’re not yet in a position to makeclaims for the program’s overall success, the early evidence suggests that we’regetting some good results and learning some valuable lessons. One partnershipmodel—seen in the pairing of Vassar College and Sponsors for EducationalOpportunity (SEO)—brought together colleges with organizations whose studentscome from across New York City. The Vassar College-SEO collaborationwas built around a team-taught course on the Civil Rights Movement that wasgeared to rising high school seniors. The course ran on the Vassar College campus,where students were in residence for a week. A follow-up in the spring willbring Vassar College instructors to New York City to continue their work withSEO students.The students’ intense on-campus experience and steep learning curve shinethrough in the course blog (www.vassarscholars.blogspot.com). Scrollingthrough it, one stops short at statements like this:I would like to think of college as the pearly gates to success. Over thecourse of this week I have received the opportunity to visit the pearly gatesas well as learn skills required to enter the gates. So, I’m sure your wonderingwell what are the skills she’s learned? And it’s simple. What you investin yourself is the minimum effort someone else can invest in you. Over thisweek a couple of people took the time to invest in me. So at the pearly gatesI encountered couple of people who were willing to meet the investment Imade in myself. (Shedia; August 3, 2006)Any experience that prompts such thoughtful reflection on the value anddynamic of a college experience can surely be counted a success, and facultywho taught the course agree. Professor of Art History Lisa Collins points to themoment in class when students changed their minds about how they would haveresponded to the brutal murder of Emmett Till. In a discussion shaped by students’sense of how “defiantly and fearlessly” they would have behaved, in contrastto the black Mississippians about whom they were reading, one student’scomment re-directed the group’s thought: “ …we wouldn’t have developed ourpersonalities within Jim Crow.” Her understanding of the complicated ways inwhich the Jim Crow south would have affected everything they said and did,writes Lisa, “press[ed] others to commit to understanding a time and place farremoved from their own…[and] brought out the best in us all.” 7Another model for collaboration linked colleges and universities with community-basedorganizations whose student bodies come from the neighborhoodCAPTURE THE CHALLENGEAND EXCITEMENT THATIS THE PROCESS OFREVELATION—ORMOMENT OF EPIPHANY—THAT HAPPENS WHENSOMEONE SAYS,“I GET IT!”GRANTS TO COMMUNITY SERVICEORGANIZATIONS FOR COLLEGEPREPARATION($40,000 OVER 12 MONTHS)The Boys' Club of New YorkCitizens Advice BureauEast Side House SettlementEast Harlem Tutorial ProgramGroundworkHarlem Educational Activities FundLeadership Enterprise for a DiverseAmericaPrep for PrepSponsors for Educational OpportunityUnion Settlement HouseADDITIONAL GRANTS TO COMMUNITYSERVICE ORGANIZATIONS($25,000 OVER 12 MONTHS)Community for Education Foundation /Overcoming ObstaclesJacob A. Riis NeighborhoodSettlement HouseProject Reach Youth7Lisa Collins, e-mail to author, August 20, 2006.13

ESSAY 02 BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS: THE COLLEGE-COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS EXPERIMENT02in which they are located. Fordham University and Citizen’s Advice Bureau,both in the Bronx, came together for an adventurous history course that tookstudents at different stages of their high school careers out into New York City.Led by Brian Purnell, a Fordham faculty member and research director of theuniversity’s Bronx African American Oral History Project, teams of studentslearned not just how to do archival research, but also how to get out into thecommunities they were studying—in this case their own Bronx neighborhoods—conductinterviews and construct oral histories as well. At the end ofthe course, a short residency on Fordham’s Rose Hill campus gave students theopportunity to consolidate their work, which they formally presented to anaudience of peers, parents and others on the program’s final day.The intellectual challenge and excitement of these projects came through atevery turn, and there are more to come, but there are also some formidable challenges.I think of Benny Lyde, a young man who by all accounts was making it.A student at Long Island University, he was working with the Brooklyn-basedorganization Groundwork—also a CCC participant—to help others get a similareducation. Benny died last fall of a gunshot wound inflicted—as far as anyonecan tell—simply by envy 8 . This tragic event is a sober counter-weight to thesense of academic expansiveness that grounds this program day to day.CCC does its work within these extremes.WHAT WILL SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?• One benchmark will be the number of CCC students who graduate fromhigh school and go on to college.• Another will be how many truly thrive in college, finding their intellectualpassion and the discipline to channel it meaningfully. Earlier in this essay Icited a White Paper entitled “Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities inCollege Completion and Achievement: Current Initiatives, New Ideas, andAssessment”* and that paper—produced by a Teagle-funded workinggroup led by David Harris of Cornell University—can help us better understandhow to foster that kind of engagement and success. The colleges inthat group were willing to ask difficult questions about how well minoritystudents do at their institutions and why. Crucial to their work—and toours—is its insistence on encouraging students from underserved communitiesto set their educational goals and standards high, and helpingcolleges do all they can to ensure that these students accomplish their goals.TEAMS OF STUDENTSLEARN NOT JUST HOWTO DO ARCHIVALRESEARCH, BUT ALSOHOW TO GET OUT INTOTHE COMMUNITIESTHEY ARE STUDYING.• Yet another will be how many persist through to college graduation. EveryCCC student who earns a degree will point a way to narrowing racial,ethnic, and economic achievement gaps.CCC is at once an ambitious and a modest program. It can not redress all theeducational inequities that exist in New York City, can not even ensure that allthe talented students who would benefit from a college education will get there.But it can nurture the talents of some students, and take us some way on thepath we all want to travel. We will continue to let you know how it goes.8Reporting for the New York Times on December 3, 2005, Al Baker and Ann Farmer wrote that “jealousy”was being considered as a motive in the shooting.14

FACULTY HESITATE TO ENGAGE QUESTIONS OF MEANINGAND VALUE BECUASE THEY FEEL ILL PREPARED TO ANSWERTHEM. STUDENTS DON’T NEED TO BE TOLD THE ANSWERS,BUT RATHER HELPED TO FORMULATE THE QUESTIONS.ESSAY 0303ASKING THE BIG QUESTIONSBy W. Robert Connor

ESSAY 0303ASKINGTHE BIG QUESTIONSBy W. Robert Connora college president recently wrote me to say that she had noticed somethingvery striking when she compared faculty and student responses to similarlyworded questionnaires:Let's take the student survey formulation: Students reporting that it is “essential”or “very important” that this college helps you develop your personalvalues. 79.5 percent of [our] student respondents fell into this category...Turning to the faculty survey…the response to the question: “Is it essentialor very important that the college helps students develop personal values?”yielded a 50.9 percent response….Responses to other questions on these surveys showed a similar dividebetween faculty and students. And this college is not alone: there’s abundantevidence from around the country, east and west, from prestigious institutionsand less well-known ones, large and small, of a “disconnect” between facultyand students on this matter.Is that a problem? Some friends have suggested to me that it is healthy forfaculty and students to have different perspectives. Others have said it’s not afaculty member’s responsibility to talk about anything outside his or her professionalexpertise. It’s hard enough to get today’s students up to speed in theirreading, writing, and quantitative skills. Focus there.If it’s not a problem, it might still be an opportunity not to be missed. Since,in the early days of the Foundation, Walter Teagle urged the directors always tobe sympathetic to “religious work,” we thought it was at least worth an effort toexamine the handling of questions of meaning and value in today’s colleges anduniversities. After I started reading, telephoning, and checking data, I becameconvinced that the story was a much larger one that I had anticipated. There wasa sea of change under way in American society that, while hard to describe, hadimmensely powerful social, political, and educational implications. Americans,perhaps more than the citizens of any other land, said they had religious or spiritualcommitments or concerns. Many of them worshipped with some regularity.And while in the past “religion was a personal matter,” it was now entering thepublic square with greater frequency, intensity, and often with polarizing effects.All citizens, especially those concerned with higher education, needed to understandthat change and work out their own responses to it.What’s more, young people were surprisingly active and engaged with thesematters, if not in the classroom, then in bible study groups, in religious associations,or in personal religious or spiritual practices. Religion was not going tofade away as younger generations replaced their elders or as modernization andprosperity increased. (The Social Science Research Council is preparing, withTeagle support, a publication on “What college teachers should know about thereligious engagements of today’s undergraduates.”)In light of what I was finding, a further step seemed to make sense. InSeptember 2005, the Teagle Foundation convened one of its Listenings on theBlue Ridge in North Carolina, a gathering of approximately sixty faculty members,students, chaplains, college and seminary presidents, and other thoughtfulpeople who shared a concern about the importance of these issues, even thoughTHERE’S ABUNDANTEVIDENCE FROMAROUND THE COUNTRYOF A “DISCONNECT”BETWEEN FACULTYAND STUDENTS.FRESH THINKINGBIG QUESTIONS WORKING GROUPSGraduate Theological Union, AmericanBaptist Seminary of the West, ChurchDivinity School of the Pacific, DominicanSchool of Philosophy and Theology,Franciscan School of Theology, JesuitSchool of Theology at Berkeley, PacificLutheran Theological Seminary, PacificSchool of Religion, San FranciscoTheological Seminary, Starr King Schoolfor the Ministry, University of Californiaat Berkeley$100,000 over 24 monthsEngaging Meaning through Mentorship:Strengthening Post-Secondary LiberalEducation through Vocation-BasedMentoring of Future FacultyHampshire College, Berea College,Cornell College, Smith College, WarrenWilson College, Worcester PolytechnicInstitute$100,000 over 24 monthsThe Liberal Arts as Preparation for a Lifeof WorkNational Humanities Center$90,251 over 15 monthsContemporary Challenges to the Conceptof the HumanThe Phi Beta Kappa Society$100,000 over 20 monthsDeliberation about Things that Matter*Asterisked titles can be found on our website, www.teaglefoundation.org .16

ESSAY 03 ASKING THE BIG QUESTIONS03they differed in approach, tradition, and many other ways. The conversation wasfascinating, all the more so when juxtaposed with electronic exchanges in aVirtual Listening which we convened over the succeeding weeks. In the VirtualListening, we framed our question about the place of “Big Questions” ofmeaning and value in rigorously secular terms.The discussions were rich and exciting. I will not attempt to characterizethem or discuss the difficult issues that arose because I have already gone intothis matter in some depth in an essay, “The Right Time and Place for BigQuestions”* in the Chronicle of Higher Education. These Listenings were notintended to produce a neat formula for use in every class and institution. Theydid, however, demonstrate that these issues, whether formulated in secular orreligious terms, had great currency on campuses and that many students andfaculty were eager to find better ways to engage them. The topic seemed a naturalone for the Foundation’s “Fresh Thinking” initiative in which working groupscollaborate to develop new approaches to important issues in liberal education.We were already seeing good results from early grants of this sort. (WhitePapers produced by the first round of multi-institutional Teagle Working Groupsare now posted on our website.) A more recent series of grants to individualcolleges also seemed very promising. We decided then to send out a Request forProposals for new collaborative working groups on “Big Questions” under ourFresh Thinking initiative.We used the term “Big Questions” for two reasons. One was its latitude. Wewanted to signal that we were willing to consider approaches that were formulatedin either religious or secular terms. That seemed to work well; in fact one of themost interesting proposals we received was from Vassar College to look at theconcept of “secularism” itself, and its strengths and limitations as a basis forliberal education.The other reason for using the term “Big Questions” was pedagogical. Wefound that one reason why faculty hesitated to engage with questions of valueand meaning was that they felt ill prepared to “answer” the questions. Our explorationof this area, however, showed that students didn’t need to be told theanswer, but rather helped to formulate the questions, recognize that others hadstruggled with these questions before, and acquire the tools to develop their ownanswers to the questions. (By “tools” I mean vocabularies, metaphors, logic, andhabits of civility and respect for differing viewpoints, etc.)The response to this initiative has been exciting: Phi Beta Kappa will beexploring this subject with many of its chapters around the country; theNational Humanities Center has linked its project to their larger programwhich explores differing understandings of “the human,” as well as new waysto share some of the best thinking on this Big Question with classroom teachersaround the country.These projects, I believe, have the potential of greatly invigorating teachingand learning in the liberal arts and sciences. As this report is being written, anew Request for Proposals in our Fresh Thinking initiative is being posted onour website. It is formulated to encourage collaborative working groups developingnew approaches to liberal education, not least through more explicit engagementwith the “Big Questions.”BIG QUESTIONS WORKING GROUPS(CONT)The University of Chicago, MacalesterCollege, Midwest Faculty Seminar$100,000 over 24 monthsWhat can I do to right the wrongs ofthe world?University of Richmond, AssociatedColleges of the South, Virginia Foundationfor Independent Colleges, historicallyblack colleges and universities in Virginia$100,000 over 24 monthsThe Pedagogy of Belief and DoubtVassar College, Bucknell University,Macalester College, Williams College$99,377 over 24 monthsOn Secularity and Liberal EducationCOLLEGE-BASED WORKING GROUPSCalvin College$99,340 over 19 monthsStrengthening Liberal Arts Education byEmbracing Place and ParticularityCollege of Saint Benedict and St. JohnsUniversity$91,657 over 18 monthsControversial Conversations: Gender Dialoguein a Faith-Based Liberal Arts CollegeLawrence University$100,000 over 20 monthsA Study of the Lawrence Fellows inLiberal Arts and SciencesMount Holyoke College$100,000 over 20 monthsExpanding Learning Abroad Opportunitiesfor All StudentsWheaton College (Massachusetts)$99,500 over 20 monthsExpanding Quantitative Analysis as aFramework for Interdisciplinary Learningand Applied Problem SolvingRELIGIOUS WORKSocial Science Research Council (SSRC)$40,000 over 6 months"What College Teachers Should Knowabout the Religious Engagements ofToday's Undergraduates"Full project descriptions can be found on ourwebsite, www.teaglefoundation.org .17

CAN YOU IMAGINE A NEW LANDSCAPE FOR HIGHEREDUCATION? FACULTY USING NEW KNOWLEDGE ABOUTHOW TO INCREASE STUDENT LEARNING ARE SHAPINGTHE FUTURE OF LIBERAL EDUCATION.ESSAY 04 GETTING THERE By W. Robert Connor04

ESSAY 0404caseGETTING THEREBy W. Robert Connorafter so many years in academia, whatI have been seeing over the past year at theTeagle Foundation keeps surprising me. There-conceptualization of educational goals towhich the first essay in this series calls attention,the enthusiastic faculty response to theCollege-Community Connections program, theenergy and imagination elicited by the Foundation’s“Big Questions” initiative, and muchelse that comes to my attention make me thinkthat I can begin to see—dimly, imperfectly—awhole new landscape of higher education. It’s anew terrain in which all we know about studentengagement and learning comes together in acoherent system to produce progressively higherlevels of student engagement and learning.Maybe that is too optimistic. At best, thisnew landscape is in the distance. But it’s worthasking how we can move in that direction.How might we get there? In trying to answerthose questions, it is essential, I believe, not tolet the best be the enemy of the good. We canall dream of a new landscape in which graduateeducation is restructured, the criteria for facultyadvancement, tenure, and compensation arebroadened, resources reallocated, the rewardsystem reordered, and so on. Certainly allof us—faculty members, administrators,governing board members, alumni, students—can insist on a renewed focus on student engagementand learning in the undergraduate years.(See my essay, “From Foxes to Hedgehogs”*)But we are far from agreeing on, let alone implementing,a wide-ranging structural reform ofhigher education.Let’s not wait for that. In the meantime,there are practical steps that can be taken tosignificantly increase student learning, and, Isuspect, faculty satisfaction as well. Three ofthem are more systematic assessment, a freshlook at the undergraduate major, and greaterattention to one neglected form of leadership.In each of these areas, I hope the TeagleFoundation can help encourage constructive,practical change, but our efforts are not discreteundertakings, but coordinated, step-by-stepmovements forward.studyAFTER HURRICANE KATRINAWhen Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, itseducational institutions, like so much else in the city, were hardhit. The Teagle Foundation responded with a $600,000 commitment—$100,000to Tulane University and $500,000 over twoyears to Dillard University, a historically black institution withwhich the Foundation has long had ties.Dillard decided to use these funds in large part to help studentsreturn to campus—a pressing need for the university anda difficult problem for many of its students. The administrationprojected that approximately 700 students would return for thetwo academic sessions planned for spring 2006 (down from1,993 in fall 2004), but in fact over 1,000 students came back foreach of the sessions. With the Foundation’s grant, Dillard wasable to provide scholarships of $1,100 to 302 of those students,and 142 students will benefit from the same support this academicyear.Returning to campus was not easy. As Rebecca K. Roussell,a Dillard senior, wrote on March 5, 2006 in The News &Observer (Raleigh, NC):It was very emotional returning to…New Orleans….But I didcome back. I came back to a place that is uncertain, wheresecurity and law enforcement are questionable….I cameback to walk as a member of the Class of 2006 from DillardUniversity….I came back to contribute my small part inrestoring the culture, repairing torn lives and renewing oneof the most vital cities in the United States.On July 1, 2006, Dillard was able to hold its commencementon its beautiful tree-lined campus. Under the leadership of Dr.Marvalene Hughes, Dillard has survived its first year post-Katrina, and has ushered in the era of the “new Dillard,” lookingforward, always, to continued recovery and renewed strength.*Asterisked titles can be found on our website,www.teaglefoundation.org .19

ESSAY 04 GETTING THERE04A TIP-OVER IN ASSESSMENT: As we have seen, when collegesredefined liberal education from “exposing” students to certain content to helpingthem develop cognitive capacities, traditional course exams were no longer sufficientas a means to monitor student progress. The relatively young assessmentmovement draws much of its energy from this simple fact. If I am not mistaken,that movement reached a tip-over point during the last year; this time, the tip-overis in a positive direction. Campus discussions I have been able to eavesdrop onhave shifted from whether systematic assessment should be used in higher education,to how. That is very gratifying to us since the Foundation believes thatground up, faculty driven assessment, is one of the most effective ways to increasestudent learning and engagement. We have been pleased to find assessment takinga prominent place, even in projects that fall under other rubrics. For example, aWhite Paper on “The Pedagogy of Ethnicity,”* whose primary aim was to developfresh approaches for courses that tackle questions of ethnicity, tested its ideas bytrying them out in various classes, and made a start at evaluating them.Assessment has become part of the new landscape of higher education. Recognizingthis, foresighted college presidents are moving their institutions out ahead:We believe that colleges and universities should demonstrate their effectivenessthrough a scholarly examination of the impact of their educational programs onstudents. Faculty and administrators are accustomed to scholarly endeavors inwhich they must provide supporting evidence for assessments made; we shouldexpect to do no less when making claims about degrees to which studentsbecome better educated through our curricula. (Report to the Teagle Foundation,Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, President of Kalamazoo College)It is, moreover, now possible to assess the cognitive gains students are makingmuch more effectively than just a few years ago. Many of the institutions withwhich we are working use the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)or the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) developed by the Council forAid to Education.Indeed one of my most exciting moments this past year came at a gathering ofthirty-two colleges, working together on a Teagle funded value-added assessmentproject under the auspices of the Council of Independent Colleges. Each collegehad agreed to use the Collegiate Learning Assessment to assess their students’abilities in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving, and writing.Over the past year, these colleges had corralled their first year students to fill outquestionnaires and write essays to establish a base line for subsequent stages of theproject. Later in the year, seniors had to be persuaded to “take one more test.” Nowthe moment of truth had come: I watched blue folders being distributed to the teamfrom each participating college. They contained summary results of the testing andcomparisons to those at over a hundred other colleges. “How have we done?” wasthe first question. It was not a surprise that I saw many relieved expressions. Afterall, colleges that have the determination and commitment to find out how theirstudents are doing are probably already doing pretty well themselves. There’s a sighof relief. Then the second question: “How can we do better?”This project, like many others in the assessment area, is still at an early stage.It is clear, however, that in one form or another, assessment is here to stay.Institutions that recognize this have a chance to help their students in importantnew ways, thereby adding value to their college experience. It’s also clear thatASSESSMENT HASBECOME PART OF THENEW LANDSCAPE OFHIGHER EDUCATION.RECOGNIZING THIS,FORESIGHTED COLLEGEPRESIDENTS AREMOVING THEIR INSTI-TUTIONS OUT AHEAD.SPECIAL GRANTSGROUNDWORK$25,000 over 12 monthsBenny Lyde Scholarship Fund(matching grant)DILLARD UNIVERSITY$500,000 over 24 monthsFor Student Support in the Aftermathof Hurricane KatrinaTULANE UNIVERSITY$100,000 over 12 monthsFor Student Support in the Aftermathof Hurricane KatrinaFull project descriptions can be found on ourwebsite, www.teaglefoundation.org .20

ESSAY 04 GETTING THERE04momentum is building. That comes not so much, I think, from above as governingboards, accrediting agencies, and now the Bush administration’s NationalCommission on the Future of Higher Education, pressing for more “accountability,”but—in our experience—from deans and faculty members who recognizethat well-crafted assessment can help faculty teach better and students learnbetter. (The Commission’s wide ranging report can be found at US Departmentof Education website.)There are now over one hundred colleges around the country that in one way oranother are participating in Teagle funded projects in the systematic assessment ofstudent learning. These include the twenty-one colleges participating in five newad hoc collaboratives funded in May 2006. In addition, the Center of Inquiry in theLiberal Arts at Wabash College will soon provide advice and help to colleges thatdecide to use more systematic forms of assessment. Momentum is clearly building.As we have seen in the description of the meeting convened by the Council ofIndependent Colleges, with Teagle support, highly respected national associationsof colleges and universities are helping their members use assessment wisely.These include the Association of American Colleges and Universities, theAppalachian College Association, the Associated Colleges of the South, and otherregional associations of liberal arts colleges.That, in brief, is the state of play at this moment. The next phase of work willbe exciting, difficult, and important, converting this new knowledge about studentlearning into better teaching. The Foundation will continue to do all it can to helpcolleges—and great universities as well—to use assessment wisely, since weare convinced it is a practical and powerful aid in efforts to increase studentengagement and learning.THE DISCIPLINES: The redefinition of educational goals discussed inthe first of these essays affects not only the way students attain breadth of learningduring their undergraduate years, but also the depth of learning in areas in whichthey concentrate. Over the past year, the Foundation has also started severalconversations about the relationship between the goals of liberal education andthe objectives of the scholarly disciplines. The undergraduate major, of course,is the intersection point between these two concerns.Not so many years ago when “liberal education” was equated with “generaleducation”—that is, a few broad courses in the first year or two of college—there was little relationship between those courses and the specialized work ofthe upper class years. Now, with liberal education reconceptualized in manyinstitutions, as the development of cognitive and personal capacities (those“habits of the heart and mind,” as some friends phrase it), the undergraduatemajor turns out not to be the opposite of liberal education, but a natural ally.If, for example, analytical reasoning is a major goal of liberal education, suchreasoning is not likely to be developed in a vacuum. This capacity is like amuscle developed in the tug of war between evidence and generalization thatgoes on in every genuine academic discipline.How then can the undergraduate major benefit from, and contribute to, amore robust liberal education? Answers to this question may vary from field tofield and institution to institution, but the time has come, we believe, to ask thatquestion and to draw into the discussion a wide range of “stakeholders”—THE GOALS OFLIBERAL EDUCATIONAND THE SCHOLARLYDISCIPLINESINTERSECT IN THEUNDERGRADUATEMAJOR.21

ESSAY 04 GETTING THERE04casenot just the faculty who teach undergraduate andgraduate students in a field, but their colleagues inrelated disciplines, alumni, employers, and otherconcerned and thoughtful friends.Part of the vision of a new landscape of undergraduateeducation involves a synergy between the major andthe work that precedes and surrounds it in a robust liberaleducation. To that end, the Foundation has invited academicprofessional associations and others to submitproposals to form Teagle Working Groups that candevelop better ways of linking the major and otherparts of undergraduate liberal education. At this writingpreliminary proposals are in hand from a dozen suchorganizations, a response that promises importantresults, we believe, in the coming years. (The Requestfor Proposals can be found on our website, www.teaglefoundation.org .)LEADERSHIP: A major goal of the TeagleFoundation is to provide leadership for the invigorationof liberal education. But let’s be realistic: the leadershipthat really counts doesn’t perch in some foundationoffice. It’s on the ground, in classrooms, in facultyoffices and meetings, and in off-campus programs suchas our College-Community Connections program.Faculty who decide not to wait to put into use the newknowledge about how to increase student learning aresurfing the wave of the future, but they may still feelisolated, unappreciated, and in some danger of a careerwipe out. No foundation can change all that, but at theTeagle Foundation we have become increasingly awareof the special importance of faculty leadership (a neglectedand sometimes endangered species in the leadershipgenus). We want to recognize that leadership,sustain it, and listen closely to it. We plan to continueour practice of convening the leaders of Teagle fundedgroups, encouraging the development of “communitiesof practice” among them. (For more on “communities ofpractice,” see the Teagle Foundation’s 2005 AnnualReport,* page 15 of the pdf.) But we have a further hopein mind when we bring these colleagues together, for wesee their projects not as separate activities, but asmutually reinforcing efforts to ensure that when thehistory of American higher education is written, it willhave a powerful and positive story to tell.studyAIM HIGH“Aim high” is the message of the long-standing TeagleScholarship Program for employees of the Exxon MobilCorporation and their children. And it’s a very timelymessage as college costs escalate and many fine studentsdoubt they can afford a high quality college education.The Teagle Scholarship Program is a long standinginitiative of the Foundation inspired by Walter Teagle’s wishto help employees of his firm who desired to pursue “someeducational advantage.” This year, a generous endowmentdonation of $2.5 million from ExxonMobil enabled theFoundation to establish the L. R. Raymond Awards in theTeagle Scholarship Program. Over 100 students distinguishedthemselves sufficiently in a national competition toqualify for one of these prestigious honorary awards of$1,000 each. The awards honor Lee R. Raymond, the recentlyretired Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil. At the same time,the maximum award for the need-based TeagleScholarships was increased from $6,000 to $10,000.Winners of these scholarships demonstrate suchachievement, aspiration, and promise that any college in theland would likely be eager to see them matriculate, andwould provide financial aid packages for them. By recognizingsuch qualities and by helping with debt and other financialburdens, the Teagle Scholarship Program encouragesstudents to aim high and not be discouraged by thedifficulties—both real and imagined—on their way to thecollege that is right for them.ExxonMobil employees and their children who think theymay qualify for the Program should contact the EducationalTesting Service’s office of Scholarship and RecognitionPrograms at (609) 771-7878. Additional information may alsobe found on our website at www.teaglefoundation.org.22

FINANCIALSinvestment informationTHE FOUNDATION’S INVESTMENT OBJECTIVE IS TO ENHANCE THE YIELD OF THE PORTFOLIOAND THEREBY MAXIMIZE OUR ABILITY TO FULFILL OUR MISSION. THE MARKET VALUE OF THEPORTFOLIO WAS APPROXIMATELY $165 MILLION ON JUNE 30, 2006. THE PORTFOLIO INCLUDESA DIVERSIFIED MIXTURE OF LARGE-, MID-, AND SMALL-CAP MANAGERS AND A BALANCEBETWEEN VALUE AND GROWTH INVESTMENT STYLES. ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT STRATEGIESINCLUDE VENTURE CAPITAL, PRIVATE EQUITY, REAL ESTATE AND MULTI-STRATEGY HEDGEFUNDS. AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.14%5%3%14%12%31%21%PROJECTED GRANTMAKINGOutcomes and Assessment 31%Fresh Thinking 21%College-Community Connections 14%Other Higher Education 14%ExxonMobil Scholarships 12%Meetings, Research and Evaluation 5%Matching and Honorary Gifts 3%6%27%13%1%21%22%10%ASSET ALLOCATIONAlternative Equity Strategies 27%Domestic Equities 22%International Equities 21%Fixed Income 13%ExxonMobil Stock 10%Real Estate 6%Other Assets 1%23

BOARD AND STAFFboard of directorsjohn s. chalstyChairmanMuirfield Capital Management LLCkenneth p. cohenVice President, Public AffairsExxon Mobil Corporationw. robert connorPresidentThe Teagle Foundationsol gittlemanAlice and Nathan Gantcher University ProfessorTufts Universitywilliam chester jordanDayton-Stockton Professor of HistoryPrinceton Universityjayne keithPresidentJayne W. Teagle, Inc.roland macholdTreasurerState of New Jersey, retiredmary patterson mcphersonVice PresidentThe Andrew W. Mellon Foundationrichard l. morrillChancellorUniversity of Richmondphilip b. pool, jr.Managing DirectorWillis Stein & Partnersbarbara paul robinsonPartnerDebevoise & Plimpton LLPanne m. tatlock(retired June 30, 2006)Chairman and CEOFiduciary Trust Internationalwalter c. teagle iiiDirectorGroton Partnersstephen h. weissManaging DirectorNeuberger Bermanpauline yuPresidentAmerican Council of Learned SocietiesANNE M. TATLOCK RETIRES FROMTHE TEAGLE FOUNDATION’SBOARD OF DIRECTORSAnne M. Tatlock was a member of the Foundation’s Board of Directorsfrom 1995 to 2006, and was always actively involved in its work. Fromher first year with the Foundation, Ms. Tatlock served with distinction onthe investment committee, which she also chaired for seven years. Hertalented leadership and extraordinary investment expertise helped theFoundation build its investment base and sustain its grantmaking programs.More generally, her incisive questions at meetings were constructiveand often decisive in moving the Board’s deliberations to a fruitfulconclusion. That she has been able to serve at such a high level while atthe same time fulfilling the responsibilities of Chief Executive Officer ofFiduciary Trust Co. International and sustaining a deep involvement inmany other philanthropic activities is all the more remarkable. We aregrateful for both her contributions and her dedication to the Foundation.board officersJohn S. Chalsty, ChairStephen H. Weiss, Vice ChairW. Robert Connor, PresidentDonna Heiland, SecretaryEli Weinberg, TreasurerstaffPRESIDENT’S OFFICEw. robert connorPresidentchris graebnerAssistant to the PresidentVICE PRESIDENT’S OFFICEdonna heilandVice Presidentmegan brayOffice Assistantcheryl d. chingProgram AssistantTREASURER’S OFFICEeli weinbergTreasurervladimir grigoryevController24

THE ENDaftterwordAS YOU CAN SEE FROM THE ESSAYS IN THIS REPORT, “BIG QUESTIONS” HAVE FIGUREDPROMINENTLY IN THE WORK OF THE TEAGLE FOUNDATION OVER THE PAST YEAR. THESEQUESTIONS OF MEANING AND VALUE, OF HOW WE UNDERSTAND OURSELVES AND OURFELLOW HUMAN BEINGS, ARE CENTRAL TO THE RIGOROUS AND REWARDING COLLEGE EDU-CATIONS THAT WE WANT FOR ALL STUDENTS IN AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.THERE’S ANOTHER BIG QUESTION, HOWEVER, THAT CONCERNS US AS WE LOOK FORWARD.THAT QUESTION IS ABOUT AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION ITSELF—WHETHER IT CAN LIVEUP TO ITS PROMISE, AND ITS PAST ACHIEVEMENTS. THE PROBLEMS FACING IT CAN EASILYBECOME DISHEARTENING, DISCOURAGING TALENT, DEMORALIZING LEADERSHIP, DRIVINGAWAY SUPPORT. BUT WHEN I LOOK AT THE RESPONSE TO THE TEAGLE FOUNDATION’SRECENT EFFORTS TO STRENGTHEN HIGHER EDUCATION, I FIND GOOD REASON TO BE OPTI-MISTIC, INDEED EXCITED BY THE THOUGHT THAT THE FOUNDATION CAN BE OF HELP ATTHIS CRUCIAL MOMENT. HIGHER LEVELS OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND LEARNING NOWSEEM WITHIN REACH. THAT’S OUR GOAL, AND IF IT CAN BE ACHIEVED, THEN MANY OTHERGOOD THINGS WILL FOLLOW.John S. ChalstySeptember 200625