Points of Light’s Citizen Academy

As promised, we will be showcasing cool curriculum happenings on our ADP campuses; some of these, like our second featured course, may present new opportunities for our members.

About the Instructor
Brandon W. Kliewer, Ph.D is an assistant professor of civic engagement and interdisciplinary studies at Florida Gulf Coast University and instructor of the inaugural session of Points of Light’s Citizen Academy. He was also selected as the 2013 John Saltmarsh Award Recipient at the 2013 ADP national meeting.

Why Charitable Giving Won’t Save the World
The effectiveness of charitable giving to produce positive change is beginning to be questioned as wealth is controlled by a smaller group of people, wages remain stagnant for the average worker, and disinvestment of public institutions has become a standard custom of the American experience. The limitations of the current philanthropic model is generally highlighted on two general fronts.

First, common approaches to philanthropy disempower marginalized communities.

Philanthropic giving, from the rich to the poor, from those with to those without, treats the recipient as part of the problem instead of a key component of the solution.

Second, the philanthropic model is ineffective in producing lasting results because it perpetuates the essential structures that maintain unjust social, political, and economic relations.

Philanthropic giving is effective at reducing the suffering of marginalized communities, but allows the systems, organizations and institutions that produce unjust outcomes originally to remain essentially intact.

What Can You Do?
Sign up for a course this fall with a small cohort of your peers and dig deeper. Learn the methods of democratic engagement, critical thinking skills, and problem solving so that you are equipped to create sustainable change in your community and around the world.

Points of Light has partnered with Portland State University to offer a 3-credit pilot course entitled “Foundations of Community-Engaged Leadership.”The course will be live and online using an innovative real-time and interactive platform developed by LearnItLive.

What does it cost?
Pay what you can! If you want credits you will need to pay Portland State University money to receive those credits but at minimum you will need to pay $68 for the course reader and whatever contribution you can afford for Points of Light to help cover costs of this pilot program.

Come be a part of something big with us and we work to change the paradigm so that EVERYONE has access to the knowledge and skills for creating a better, more inclusive world!

Interested in Registration?
Please contact Tricia Thompson at tthompson@pointsoflight.org and she will get your signed up!

Class starts September 24th 2013 and runs Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:30 pm -6:45 pm ET.

Global Challenges Project Launches Version 2.0 of National Blended Curriculum

Over the next month, we will be showcasing cool curriculum happenings on our ADP campuses; some of these, like below, which may present new opportunities for our members.

By Shala Mills, National Coordinator, AASCU Global Challenges Project

AASCU’s Global Engagement Scholars were hard at work this summer updating Global Challenges: Promise and Peril in the 21^st Century. The project takes inspiration from the Seven Revolutions framework created by one of Washington D.C.’s leading bipartisan think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to examine key drivers of change likely to impact the world over the next 30 years.  Those trends are in the areas of population, resources, technology, information, economies, conflict, and governance.

The project’s goal is rooted in the mission of many of our AASCU institutions–educating globally competent citizens.  The Global Engagement Scholars, teaching faculty from various disciplines on 11 different AASCU campuses, used CSIS’s Seven Revolutions to frame a set of teaching resources that include:

• Workshops and institutes (our 2013 Global Challenges Institute is happening in November)
• A Teaching Toolkit ($20 for AASCU members)*
• An all new Student Guide ($5)*
• A newly revised National Blended Learning Course ($50/student)
• An eBook ($14.99)

Although the national blended learning course has always included access to The New York Times digital content repository, the scholars are happy to announce an exciting addition to the 2013-14 course launch: the course is now bundled with a semester-long subscription to the on-line edition of the Times, providing more comprehensive access to news as it unfolds throughout the semester.

To learn more about the project, purchase one of the related publications, sign up for an upcoming institute or workshop, or register to use the blended learning course shell, visit the project’s website at www.AASCUGlobalChallenges.org.

 

*These publications are now available in the AASCU bookstore.

The New York Times Offers Leadership Connection for Campuses

The New York Times in Leadership is designed to give teachers, scholars, practitioners and students opportunities to connect leadership concepts to real-world examples. Through news articles, discussion questions, reading lists and video conferences, among other resources, students will expand their understanding of how leadership works in the 21st century.

Faculty can:

• Check the website every morning for the new Daily Article with discussion questions linked to various focus areas
• Visit Case Studies to find a catalog of case studies developed from actual New York Times stories
• Visit Leading Thoughts where leading educators, scholars and practitioners share their thoughts on leadership
• Visit the Events listings to see our upcoming talks via video conference with New York Times journalists
• Visit Spotlight on Leaders to read about leadership initiatives from around the nation

To learn more, please send an e-mail to leadership@nytimes.com.

Stewardship of Public Lands Field Education Program Opportunity

Introduce your students to the stewardship of public lands through the science, history, and politics of Yellowstone National Park in this field program developed jointly by the Yellowstone Association and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Student groups will explore how resource issues on public lands are managed; how land managers deal with different viewpoints on the proper management of those lands; and what role citizens, organizations, and agencies play in the stewardship of those lands.

Multi-day programs are based in Gardiner, Montana at the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park, and are offered year-round. Tuition and lodging are available for as little as $90 per person per day.

For more information: http://www.yellowstoneassociation.org/institute/youth-programs.aspx or call (406) 848-2400. Scholarships for 25% of tuition costs may be available.

The Yellowstone Association, in partnership with the National Park Service, connects people to Yellowstone National Park and our natural world through education.

AASCU Global Engagement Scholars Announce Release of eBook

The AASCU Global Engagement Scholars are excited to announce the release of their latest collaborative work—their eBook, Global Challenges: Promise & Peril in the 21^st Century (ISBN: 9781402284168, E-ISBN: 9781402284168).

The eBook is an exciting outgrowth of the Scholars’ on-going efforts to educate globally competent citizens.

In 2006, AASCU partnered with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and The New York Times to begin a joint project entitled “Seven Revolutions: Educating Globally Competent Citizens.”  The project’s goal was to promote the study of global issues in the hopes of preparing students to be engaged global citizens.  This program, centered on the Seven Revolutions framework developed by CSIS, focused on seven important categories relevant to global citizenship, as well as significant future trends: Population, Resources, Information, Technology, Economic Integration, Security/Conflict, and Governance (http://csis.org/program/seven-revolutions.)

Over the last nearly seven years the joint project has undergone a variety of important changes.  Still informed by the work of CSIS and supported by The New York Times digital content repository, this project has evolved into the Global Engagement Initiative—the only internationally focused Civic Engagement in Action Series initiative—and Global Challenges Project—one of the first Red Balloon projects aimed at reimagining higher education in the 21^st century.  Teaching faculty from 11 AASCU institutions (California State University Fresno; Fort Hays State University; Fort Lewis College; Georgia College; Kennesaw State University; Northern Arizona University; Richard Stockton College of New Jersey; San Jose State University; Southeast Missouri State University; University of Minnesota Duluth; and Western Kentucky University) have contributed to the endeavor.

The Global Engagement Scholars have produced a Teaching Toolkit and a national, fully customizable, turn-key blended-model course.  They have a collaborative web space and have presented at a series of AASCU institutes and workshops.  The eBook is the latest addition to a terrific set of tools to help faculty better educate students to possess the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will make them more effective in addressing these serious global challenges.

Similar in content to the Global Challenges blended-learning course, the eBook uses the CSIS framework, New York Times articles, videos, and interactive maps, making it a useful companion to the course or an appropriate stand-alone text.  Unlike the blended learning course, the eBook does not include quizzes, assignments, or other learning activities, making it more flexible across a variety of courses and learning objectives.

Special Features include an embedded glossary that reveals definitions of unfamiliar terms when a student hovers over or highlights the term, as well as a highlighting feature that allows students to mark the text, reinforcing the information for the student and providing a valuable study tool as students review highlighted content.

The $14.99 eBook is available in a BYOD (bring your own device) version via VitalSource, http://store.vitalsource.com/show/9781402284168 or in an iBook version via iBooks (please note that you will only be able to search for and download this text on an iPad, not an iPhone or iPod).

For more information about AASCU’s Global Challenges course, click here (http://www.aascu.org/GlobalChallenges/ or contact the National Course Coordinator, Shala Mills (GlobalChallenges@fhsu.edu), at Fort Hays State University.