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Minutes - ATLAS Meeting, Oct 4, 2017

ATLAS

Intro by Jeff Cox

  • Intro on teaching and reaching visioning
  • Laying out of fall work
  • Role of Committee and Report

Intro to A&S Strategic Planning Process by David Brown

  • History of A&S process
  • Work of committee to date—draft vision statement
  • Schedule for committee’s work

Comment:  We need to think about how we react to political pressures on higher education.  We need to have a conversation on how we relate to the public.

Q.  Can we discuss offering a free undergraduate education?

            A.  We will discuss anything participants wish to raise.

Comment:  We need to rethink libraries.  What will they look like the future?  Can they include maker spaces?

Comment:  We might want to look at the University of Wisconsin’s process around imagining a “Counterfactual Campus to inquire about the university we would like to live in.

Comment:  Consider all the publics we serve.

Comment:  We need to have ways of measuring whether we are actually teaching critical thinking.

Comment:  We need to think about how empathy is part of being an intellectual.

Comment:  We need to think through the role of public intellectuals.

Comment:  We must maintain our commitment to diversity

Comment:  Think about spaces and how they can be built to be welcoming, how they can encourage connections.

Comment:  We need to think about the language we use to talk about how we prepare students for future, changing careers.  It is not all vocational.

Comment:  The public does not necessarily understand the function of a research university; they think about undergraduate education and career training.

Comment:  People on campus are concerned about talking about controversial topics. Safe spaces vs. free speech.  Compliance as stifling speech, creativity.  If the AF process does one thing, it should end the erosion of universities as centers of open conversations.

Comment:  Develop a course on “Science for Future Presidents,” “Technology for Future Presidents” to provide students with the information they need to be citizens.

Comment:  Integrate design charrettes into the work of the university.

Comment:  We should investigate what allows certain universities (Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech) to rise.  Leadership is a key. 

Comment:  Creativity, innovation seem tired terms.  Let’s find a new term.

Comment:  We need more options for students on degree plans.

Comment:  We should create a “tender” university.  Explore work of indigenous anthropologists on a culture of tenderness—tending, attending.

Comment:  Discuss the status of instructors.