San Antonio College Library

DSU Title III 2007-2012.

When universities began in the Middle Ages, Pope Gregory IX described them as "wisdom's special workshop." He could not have foreseen how far these institutions would travel and develop. Tracing the eight-hundred-year evolution of the elite research university from its roots in medieval Europe to its remarkable incarnation today, Wisdom's Workshop places this durable institution in sweeping historical perspective. In particular, James Axtell focuses...

"While the success of higher education and student affairs is predicated on understanding the students we serve, the reality is, where the Native American population is concerned, that this knowledge is generally lacking. This lack may be attributed to this population's invisibility within the academy - it is often excluded from institutional data and reporting, and frequently noted as not statistically significant - and its relegation to what is...

This book explores foundational issues surrounding the interaction of religion and the academy in the twenty-first century. Featuring the work of eighteen scholars from diverse institutional, disciplinary, and religious backgrounds, this collection of essays issues from a three-year Lilly Seminar on Religion and Higher Education. Reflecting the diversity of the seminar participants, this volume presents a wide variety of viewpoints on the role of...

"Based on the 2003 Clark Kerr Lectures, A Larger Sense of Purpose draws from Harold T. Shapiro's twenty-five years of experience in leading major research universities, and takes up key topics of debate in higher education. What are the nature and objectives of a liberal education? How should universities address the increasing commercialization not only of intercollegiate sports, but of education and research? What are the university's responsibilities...

In A History of American Higher Education, Thelin offers a wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's public and private colleges and universities, emphasizing the notion of saga -- the proposition that institutions are heirs to numerous historical strands and numerous attempts to address such volatile topics as institutional cost and effectiveness, admissions and access, and the character of the curriculum. Thelin...

"In an essential book for teachers and others interested in education, an eminent scholar looks at the academic world from a much-overlooked perspective: that of students who don't get it. Gerald Graff argues that our schools and colleges make the intellectual life seem more opaque, specialized, and beyond normal learning capacities than it is or needs to be. Left clueless in the academic world, many students view the life of the mind as a secret...

"The Power of Privilege examines the nexus between social class and admissions at America's top colleges from the vantage point of Yale University, a key actor in the history of higher education. It is a documented history of the institutional gatekeepers, confident of the validity of socially biased measures of merit, seeking to select tomorrow's leadership class from among their economically privileged clientele. Acceptance in prestigious colleges...

This work makes clear that diverse populations of students experience college differently and encounter group-specific barriers to success. Informed by relevant theories, each chapter focuses on a different population for whom research confirms that engagement and connectivity to the college experience are problematic.

A lightning rod for liberal and conservative opposition alike, affirmative action has proved one of the more divisive issues in the United States over the past five decades. The author here offers a thoughtful study of early opposition to the nation's race and gender-sensitive hiring and promotion programs in higher education and the workplace. This story begins more than fifteen years before the 1978 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Regents of the...