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Think of the United States Military Academy and the typical images are of duty, character, leadership, and possibly even regimented conformity. Intellectual liberation, integrative innovation, and holistic development--hallmarks of a liberal education--are not always associated with the public's perception of the West Point experience. Yet, consider this: today's military operates in contexts where uncertainty and ambiguity are commonplace. Human security challenges exacerbated within regional trouble spots are frequently characterized by extreme poverty, a lack of infrastructure, an inability of people within these regions to plug into a globally connected world, and intrastate violence. Such challenges, when coupled with U.S. interests, demand an officer corps capable of responding promptly and effectively to a diverse set of issues in environments that require innovation, flexibility, and adaptability. The army needs officers who have benefitted from a liberal education. This article describes the curricular renewal at West Point. Today, West Point is, first and foremost, a liberal arts college with a focus on transformational learning.

While state legislatures are increasingly enacting articulation policies, research to date provides little evidence that these policies enhance students' likelihood of transfer. Based on a careful historical review of state statutes, the authors propose that articulation policies do not improve transfer rates because that is not their intended purpose; the main goal of articulation policies is to prevent the loss of credits when students transfer within state higher education systems. Subsequently, the authors use the National Education Longitudinal Study to evaluate articulation policies based on an alternative set of outcomes: attainment of a bachelor's degree, time to degree, and credits required to complete a bachelor's degree. They discuss the limitations of existing data and propose that future studies be designed to specifically evaluate the transfer or loss of credits applicable toward general education requirements. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table, and 19 notes.)

This article presents the authors' response to David Schweingruber's comments on their paper about sociology's disciplinary core being reflected in introductory sociology textbooks. In his comment, Schweingruber argues that introductory textbooks do not adequately reflect the disciplinary core because the authors of such texts employ terms that extend beyond disciplinary boundaries. Moreover, he offers evidence purporting to show that the terms included in introductory texts do not appear frequently in the recently published articles of the discipline's most prominent journals. But near the end of his commentary, he appears to cast aside both of these positions in favor of a belief that the core is to be found not in the concepts used in the discipline but in a particular way of thinking, one essentially defined by the indefinable. The authors explain that their contention has been consistent: the discipline fails to possess a core body of knowledge commonly recognized by all who study it that serves as the foundation upon which cumulative work will be based. The authors stress that in defense of their position, they draw on Schweingruber's own statements to illustrate four plausible errors. They added that while Schweingruber appears to use their article as a springboard to present his own analysis, they contend that he brings them no closer to identifying the discipline's intellectual core.

Sociology is often portrayed as an errant discipline, driving forward without any apparent direction or purpose. We contend that these perceptions about the central tenets of our discipline derive from a lack of standardization of core material, which reduces the social value of sociology as a scientific field and erodes its credibility as a discipline. Insofar as common conceptual knowledge exists in the field of sociology, one ought to find evidence of it in the introductory textbook. To this end, our study examines 35 introductory sociology textbooks published in the 1940s (n=16) and the 1990s (n=19) in search of common concepts that represent cumulative core disciplinary knowledge. While our findings reveal uniformity in the structure of the textbooks' major chapter headings within their respective decades, our analysis of concepts--the language used to introduce disciplinary content--reveals that the vast majority are referenced by only one text, with fewer than three percent of all concepts shared in common. Moreover, neither the number of concepts introduced only once nor the variability in the total number of concepts referenced declined across the two decades. In sum, while introductory sociology textbooks are structured in similar ways, we find little commonality in the concepts used by texts' authors to frame the discipline, either within the two cross-sections or between them. (Contains 5 tables.)

A study of 2,910 sociologists who received doctorates in 1972-76 found that gender differences in scholarship productivity occurred within the first 6 years of the doctorate and continued throughout the career due to different employment patterns and publication trajectories. The results support Merton's contention that context structures the display of individual merit. (Contains 53 references.) (Author/SV)

Presents a comprehensive model for assessing the institutional effectiveness of academic programs and illustrates, through a case study, strategies for managing the difficulties inherent within this process. Models the system designed for West Point's Academic Program and describes how the model was implemented into an academic environment. Contains 19 references. (VWC)

Presents evidence, from three national studies, that departmental ratings for research doctorate programs in the United States reflect a contextual property representative of the university and not various performance-based departmental attributes. Academic departments within universities are found to be quite similar with respect to external raters' perceptions of quality. (Author/SLD)

Examines the association between departmental prestige and faculty scholarship for the discipline of sociology using evaluative ratings from three national studies and objective data on publications. Scholarship was far less important in determining current prestige ratings than either the past reputations of departments or those of their affiliated universities. Contains 57 references. (Author/SV)

Examines the research-teaching relationship in faculty work in Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea, drawing on an international survey of college and university faculty. Results indicate research and teaching are not mutually exclusive activities, but the two activities have differing effects on each other. Considers faculty publishing patterns. (Author/MSE)

Conducted meta-analysis of 37 studies dealing with long-term consequences of parental divorce for adult well-being. Results indicated adults who experienced parental divorce exhibited lower levels of well-being than did adults whose parent were continuously married. Strongest estimated effects occurred in areas of one-parent family status, psychological adjustment, behavior/conduct, and educational attainment. (Author/ABL)

Among 13,017 national survey respondents, white males, white females, black females, and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic females, who experienced separation from a biological parent during childhood had lower levels of occupational attainment than those who lived continuously with both parents, but the effects were largely mediated by education and marital status. Contains 46 references. (SV)

Interviewed a national panel of 1,668 married women and men in 1980 and 1983 to assess effects of shift work on 6 measures of marital quality (marital happiness, interaction, disagreements, general problems, sexual problems, and child-related problems) and probability of divorce. Results suggested that shift work has a modest but general adverse effect on marital quality. (Author/TE)