The educational purpose of the curricular breadth encouraged at liberal arts institutions is for students to acquire a variety of skills and knowledge, but it is often claimed that most skills are taught "across the curriculum," and liberal arts colleges tend to downplay disciplinary information when listing their educational goals. In this…

How do intellectual initiatives across disciplines evolve? This qualitative case study of 11 interdisciplinary research initiatives at Emory University identifies key factors in their development: the passionate commitments of scholarly leaders, the presence of strong collegial networks, access to timely and multiple resources, flexible practices,…

We have reached a moment in history when it is time to reenvision certain basic aspects of the existing models of teaching and research in higher education in order to foster a deeper knowledge of the nature of our existence as human beings in a world that is intricately interrelated on many levels. This article suggests that one way to accomplish…

The introduction of seminars to university teaching marks the onset of a new teaching philosophy and practice in which writing is used to make students independent learners and researchers. Although the beginnings of writing pedagogy at American universities are well documented, little is known about its origins in Germany. The article tracks the…

Research on epistemological beliefs has clearly increased in the last decade. Even though the construct is clearer and relevant data are being collected, there are important theoretical and methodological issues that need further clarification. One of them is the debate about the domain generality-specificity of epistemological beliefs. I argue…

During the last decades, traditional learning environments have been criticised for not developing the prerequisites for professional expertise (H. Mandl, H. Gruber & A. Renkl, "Interactive minds: Life-span perspectives on the social foundation of cognition," pp. 394-412, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996; P. Tynjala, "International…

This article presents interesting articles that explore several different areas of reference assessment, including practical case studies and theoretical articles that address a range of issues such as librarian behavior, patron satisfaction, virtual reference, or evaluation design. They include: (1) "Evaluating the Quality of a Chat Service"…

This article presents the author's response to the article "The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning--Done By Sociologists: Let's Make That the Sociology of Higher Education" by Chad Hanson. In this response to Hanson's call for a sociology of higher education (SHE), the author will focus upon two things. First, he will review an idea…

I report on a study of 301 sociologists to determine which concepts, topics, and skills they deem most important to cover in the introductory course and in the sociology curriculum. Respondents indicated high agreement that the list of skills, topics, and concepts adequately represented the range of possible items. I use both the raw ratings and…

Some faculty have started to use the Internet as a bridge to the public instead of merely to each other. Leveraging their specialist knowledge and their academic authority against perceived public needs, they have created another type of academic Web site on their institutional servers--the academic public service Web site (APSWS). APSWS is an…

This paper presents measures of faculty salary compression for 1993 and 1999 based on national, rather than institutional-level, data. Using a recently developed technique and two national faculty surveys, actual junior to senior salary ratios are derived as well as predicted salary ratios that represent what the salary ratios would be if junior…

Citation analysis of 265 Workforce Education and Development (WED) dissertations, theses, and graduate research papers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) was used to (1) determine core serials in the discipline, (2) provide Morris Library with a guide to serials acquisition and maintenance in the discipline, and (3) provide future…

Teachers aspire to have all of their students learn. This aspiration of reaching all students spans disciplines, age levels, and all varieties of institutions. Most teachers do so out of a genuine love for their discipline and a desire to share the wonder of their chosen field with others. Science teaching is no different than other disciplines in…

The numerous ways that postsecondary students benefit from experiential education across the academic disciplines have been well documented in the scholarly literature. One exception, however, is in the field of dance, where these effects have not been researched as extensively. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods,…

Motivated by her belief in the contributions of physical activity to the "good life" for all people, Amy Morris Homans was influential in the development of physical education as a viable and respected academic field of study in higher education. Over the past 100 years, however, as the field faced pressures to become more scientific, it has…