At Wagner College, students are required to participate in a series of three curriculum-based learning communities (C-BLCs) as the core of the undergraduate curriculum known as the Wagner Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts. This article describes the senior learning community (LC) in psychology at Wagner College, which is an example of a…

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) has widespread appeal in higher education as a suite of teaching strategies that promotes learning through students' increasingly independent investigation of questions, problems, and issues using the methods of inquiry of the disciplines. Framed as especially appropriate for research universities, IGL has been…

In 2006, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) launched a major initiative, the Top 25 Project, to embed inquiry-guided learning (IGL) into its largest-enrollment courses across the university. These are generally entry-level classes and thus affect many students: 75 percent of incoming students on its main campus in 2010 were in at least one Top 25…

The term "assessment" sends shivers down academic spines. For faculty, it signals marching orders from external parties who may or may not appreciate the subtle and not always quantifiable value of faculty efforts. For administrators, it means the dual challenge of recalibrating internal measures to meet external mandates but also…

Discusses the special needs and opportunities for effective faculty and graduate-student mentoring of undergraduates within an interdisciplinary model. The model was used in a series of large, science-based, interdisciplinary, introductory courses at the University of Michigan, but any interdisciplinary faculty team can apply the lessons learned…

An introductory statistics course is a common requirement for undergraduate economics, psychology, and sociology majors. An approach to statistics that involves the effort to encourage habits of systematic, critical quantitative thinking through focusing on descriptive statistics is discussed. (MLW)

Hampshire College needed to create opportunities for advanced undergraduates to have extensive laboratory or field experience in experimental sciences. A general biochemistry course, taught almost entirely in the laboratory, is described. The focus of the course is enzymes as catalysts and as proteins. (MLW)

A course at Hampshire College that examines the character and history of literary natural history and surveys many of its significant American authors and works is described. Issues of the relationship between people and nature are raised and discussed in terms of current environmental debates. (MLW)

A course at Hampshire College that joins the literature and analytical approaches of anthropology with certain texts in English, American, and European literature and modern criticism is described. The problems of the relationship of observer to observed, of author to text, and of audience to text are covered. (MLW)

Librarians must help students establish basic research skills, enabling students to find their way in the pertinent indexes, bibliographies, and electronic databases. A course at Hampshire College in bibliographical instruction is described. (MLW)

Inquiry is seen as a tension among three modes of imagination. These modes are labeled creation, self-criticism, and observation. Most people do not want to inquire. They tend to cling to their beliefs about the world. Freud's theories are used in a class designed to dramatize inquiry. (MLW)

The study of management in historical and comparative perspective can help resolve tensions between business and the liberal arts in undergraduate education. With the stimulus provided by the Professional Preparation Network, the Business Department at Skidmore College has developed a set of courses for the college's liberal studies core…

A course at Hampshire College is described that was designed to familiarize students with the progression, key junctures, and general drift of forces and events that are the political and economic history of Spanish America. (MLW)

With federal aid, the University of Georgia at Athens has developed a program that increases senior faculty involvement in undergraduate instruction. In a year-long seminar, senior faculty members work with junior faculty, teaching assistants, and campus faculty development staff to improve introductory-level instruction. (Author/MSE)

Inquiry education cuts across conventional distinctions between liberal arts and professional programs and is supported by specially designed curricula and pedagogies. The establishment of Hampshire College is described. The idea that undergraduate education should promote students' intellectual independence was a strong thread through the…