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September 29, 2005
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Media Contact: |
Mike Andrei
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Daemen to host annual meeting for Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning on Theme "Teaching for Social Justice and Responsibility"
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This month, Daemen College will host the annual fall meeting for the Consortium of Innovative Environments in Learning. The annual conference will take place Thursday October 13 through Saturday, October 15, 2005. This year's annual meeting will focus on the theme "Teaching for Social Justice and Responsibility."
Mary Fox, Associate Professor and Director of Early Childhood Special Education, serves as Daemen's CIEL Campus Coordinator. Mary Fox will welcome faculty and students from the CIEL member schools, which include Alverno College, The Evergreen State College, Fairhaven College at Western Washington University, Hampshire College, Johnson C. Smith University, New College of Florida, and Pitzer College. CIEL participants have come to value highly interactive and informal opportunities to exchange ideas to push each other's thinking. In this tradition, the annual meeting will feature four two-hour panels, course showcases for five innovative courses, and discussions focusing on teaching for social justice. One recent initiative of CIEL has been the idea of a book project on the topics of teaching for social justice. The meeting structure is based on a possible organization for such a book: theory, classroom pedagogy, experiential learning, and institutional structures. Writing groups are planned around these four subtopics. CIEL was conceptualized in 2000 when a group of leading liberal arts institutions from across the nation came together with the idea of creating a flexible, comprehensive system that synthesizes and disseminates key aspects of their success and serves as an incubator for new, improved, learning practices. In September of 2001, the institutions realized the vision of The Consortium for Innovative Environments in learning when they were awarded a grant of $772,263 from the U.S. Department of Education Fund for Improvement Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). During its first year, CIEL brought faculty and administrators from all member institutions together to learn from each other about existing programs and possibilities for collaboration, especially in the area of international education. During this year the members also developed a website, held a CIEL Coordinators' videoconference, and compiled an Institutional Assets list. Since then, CIEL initiatives have grown to include an online student journal, an undergraduate research symposium, inter-institutional exchange opportunities for both faculty and students, collaborative grant projects, and presentations at national conferences. For more information about CIEL, visit www.cielearn.org . For more information about the upcoming meeting, contact Mary Fox Mary Fox . |