Wye Faculty Seminar
July 19-25, 2008

The Aspen Institute and the Association of American Colleges and Universities invite you to nominate one or two of your best faculty members to attend one of the premier faculty development programs in the country, the 2008 Wye Faculty Seminar on Citizenship and the American Polity.

The Wye Faculty Seminar assists professors of every discipline from a wide range of colleges and universities in relating their teaching to broad issues of citizenship and civil society. This seminar addresses what we believe is the central need of a liberal arts institution's faculty: to exchange ideas with colleagues from other colleges and disciplines while probing the fundamental values that underlie their teaching.

Readings are selected to challenge participants to focus on values such as individual rights and responsibilities both nationally and globally, and the public purposes of education in a free, democratic republic. 

Each year an interdisciplinary cross-section of thoughtful faculty enjoy stimulating discussions in formal seminars with time to read, reflect, exercise, and socialize at the bucolic Aspen Wye River campus on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Alumni of these seminars have consistently praised the week at Wye and the many benefits they bring back to their home campuses.

The mission of the Wye Faculty Seminar is to assist professors from colleges and universities in relating their teaching to broad issues of citizenship in the American polity. The Seminar seeks to address what we believe is a central need of liberal arts institutions faculty - to exchange ideas with colleagues from other colleges and other disciplines while probing ideas and values that underlie their teaching.

History

Founded by Douglass Cater, then president of Washington College, and Josiah Bunting III, then president of Hampden-Sydney College, the Wye Faculty Seminar began as a pilot program in August 1983, when five small liberal arts colleges - Washington, Hampden-Sydney, Hood, Sweet Briar and Spelman - sent twenty professors to participate in an experimental, round-table discussion of "Citizenship and the American Polity."

Upon the retirement of Douglass Cater from Washington College and Josiah Bunting's assumption as headmaster at the Lawrenceville School, the Association of American Colleges and Universities and The Aspen Institute agreed to co-sponsor the Wye Faculty Seminar in 1991. This established partnership ensures that the Wye Faculty Seminar will remain unmatched in its power to provide professors teaching in the nation's liberal arts colleges and universities the opportunity to come together for a week of intellectual dialogue.

Costs

The fee for 2008 is $2800, including meals, lodging, and reading materials which are sent out six weeks prior to the seminar. The 2008 seminar will be held in Queenstown, Maryland and runs July 19-25, 2008.

Apply Now

Contact:
Charlene Costello
Seminar Coordinator
phone 410-820-5374
fax 410-827-9182
charlene.costello@aspeninsitute.org