With goals of fostering an intellectual atmosphere, building relationships, and increasing students' involvement on campus--and, ultimately, their rates of retention--universities around the country, including Elon, Michigan State, and Southern Methodist, are looking to residence life. House systems, residential neighborhoods, and living-learning…

Scholars contend that the college curriculum is increasingly politicized and trivialized in the name of diversity. Students are taught that Western culture is tainted by racism, sexism, and oppression, and the belief that liberal education can transcend differences and provide help in leading a moral life is being lost. (MSE)

Doctoral students become so focused on the classroom, exam and dissertation burdens of the moment that they graduate without really being prepared in terms of networking, intellectual development, and publication-ready texts. Hence, certain strategies that have proved reliable indicators are recommended, including starting the dissertation,…

Excerpts from Cornell University president Frank H. T. Rhodes's recent speech calling for a return to college curricula that enhances students' intellectual and moral well-being, provides more educational coherence and breadth, and embodies a philosophy of commitment are presented. (MSE)

Author discusses the course that led him to the field of sociology. He argues that sociologists' strength is their immediacy to the subject studied, the social world, and their weakness, sociologists' propensity towards moralism and social ideology. Author advocates detachment for a full understanding of how the social world functions.

Robert J. Sternberg's research on cognitive style and model of "mental self-government" at all educational levels have led to a pilot elementary/secondary curriculum to help students develop common sense and practical judgment as well as intellect. The interinstitutional effort between Yale and Harvard universities includes Howard…

As a result of the ideas of a university sophomore and senior and their dissatisfaction with the traditional lecture and exam format, George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) offers an experimental undergraduate course entitled "Confrontation and the Development of the Individual Mind." The English department course is taught by…

Colleges are both concerned about the effects of lifting the mandatory faculty retirement lid and interested in retaining the services of valued faculty. As a result, many are offering retiring teachers perquisites such as office and laboratory space, secretarial services, and opportunities to teach and advise part-time. (MSE)

"Music Video 454," a course surveying the history, business, and aesthetics of the most important force in both music and television, is described. The instructors teach students to analyze videos--aesthetically and sociologically, and hope to enhance their career prospects. (MLW)

In response to an emerging anti-intellectualism on campus, Saint Lawrence University (New York) instituted an interdisciplinary first-year course built around themes of community and identity. The effort is designed to stimulate intellectual development, bring faculty and students into closer contact, and blend academics and student life. (MSE)

Yale University Films' mission to make scholarly ideas more accessible to the general public is about to be realized when they broadcast a film on James Boswell to a national television audience. The movie is based on the journals of the eighteenth century Scottish diarist and biographer of Samuel Johnson. (MLW)

Jane Tompkins, a Duke University (North Carolina) English professor, is working to transform the conventional approach to college teaching from combative to communal, focusing on students' personal development as well as their intellect and deemphasizing faculty career development. Critics feel her approach is extreme and unreasonable; supporters…

Faculty members spent their time reading, thinking, and talking about American values at the Wye Faculty Seminar on the Maryland Eastern Shore. The seminar draws academics from small liberal-arts colleges and representives from business, government, and the media to exchange ideas on American social and political values. (MLW)