Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

From Accreditation to Validation: CIC’s First Half-Century
• Robert P. Lisensky, Allan O. Pfinster, and Sharon D.
Sweet, The New Liberal Learning: Technology and the
Liberal Arts (1985)
• Matilda Harris, The International Business Curriculum in
Independent Colleges and Universities (1993)
Recently, CIC has drawn attention to curricular
excellence in the sciences and humanities. The Heuer Awards
for Outstanding Achievement in Undergraduate Science
Education, inaugurated in 2001, recognize outstanding
undergraduate science programs. The criteria for the
awards include the impact on students, improvements in
the institution as a whole, service to local schools through
outreach programs, and distinctive features with potential
for wider influence in higher education. Between 2001 and
2005, the $10,000 awards were bestowed on 13 institutions.
Several partnerships have made possible special
seminars for private college faculty members. Since 2002,
CIC has cosponsored with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of
American History, an annual seminar on teaching American
history. These seminars, held at various universities and led
by noted historians, offer faculty members the opportunity
to strengthen their teaching and recharge their intellectual
batteries. In 2004 and 2005, CIC and the Council of
American Overseas Research Centers, with support from the
U.S. Department of State, collaborated to offer a seminar
on Teaching About Islam and Middle Eastern Culture to a
dozen faculty members from CIC colleges and universities.
The three-week seminars, held at the American Center of
Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, provide participants
an opportunity to learn more about the Middle East while
immersing themselves in Jordan’s rich culture.
CIC was also one of the first national associations to
recognize the revolution sparked by changes in information
technology on college campuses. In January 1984 the
Council invited Margaret MacVicar, a professor of physical
science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to
address the Presidents Institute. Attendees were given the
1997
CIC forms the Teacher
Education Accreditation
Council (TEAC).
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