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This paper discusses our department’s new objectives-based curriculum, and the web-based plan of study. Students create their own web-based inventory of objectives to help them assess their progress in each critical area. IThe program is also helpful in helping the department assess its ongoing programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an undergraduate travel course that teaches students about federal welfare, low-income housing and homeless assistance programs. The rationale and format are described, and some practical advice is offered on how to plan and execute the course. The course brings together students and policy experts involved in federal welfare and housing programs through a series of briefings and site visits in Washington, DC, and Chicago. Students have the opportunity to question those who are involved in shaping those policies at the federal level as well as to talk to officials involved in implementing them at the local level. Students also have ample opportunity to experience some of the difficulties faced by those living on welfare and who are either homeless or who live in public housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly every college mission statement expresses the desire to educate students who not only have mastered a body of academic knowledge and skills but will also be responsible and engaged citizens. But it is not clear how well colleges are achieving these traditional civic and democratic goals. This paper shares insights from a three-year Carnegie Foundation study of moral and civic education in American colleges and universities, whose results are discussed in the forthcoming book, Educating Citizens: Preparing America's Undergraduates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility (Jossey Bass, February 2003). Our study combined broad-based research on the practices and effects of higher education with in-depth case studies of twelve campuses that demonstrate a strong institutional commitment to civic education, including public and private, religious and secular, and residential and commuter campuses, community colleges and research universities, a tribal college, several women's colleges, a historically black college, and a military academy. These colleges and universities understand that the entire campus can be a site for civic teaching and learning, and that moral and civic education need not limited to a particular course or program focused on traditional "civics" content but should be integrated across curricular and co-curricular programs and many campus experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]