Deliberation and Liberal Learning

Deliberation and Liberal Learning is a multi-year series of lectures, seminars, workshops, and intellectual salons developed jointly by the Phi Beta Kappa Society and Colorado College. The first year's lectures were initiated by the Crown Faculty Center, with the aims of bringing faculty together and familiarizing them with the traditions out of which American liberal arts colleges emerged.

The second and third years were shaped by a national initiative undertaken by the Phi Beta Kappa Society and funded by the Teagle Foundation, which together encouraged the College to stage events designed to promote the teaching and learning of deliberative skills through the discussion of major issues of meaning or value ("Deliberation about Things That Matter"). Colorado College was one of eleven colleges and universities nationwide chosen by Phi Beta Kappa to participate in this program.

In its second year, the series focused on pedagogical traditions at Colorado College. Working with the Philosophy Department and the Office of the Dean, Beta of Colorado and the Crown Faculty Center sponsored three seminar discussions of The Promise of Wisdom, a work in the philosophy of education written in 1970 by J. Glenn Gray, one of the College's most influential scholar-teachers.

In the third year, the series turned to challenges facing liberal arts educators and students in the 21st century. Working with the Crown Faculty Center, the Office of the Dean, and several departments, Deliberation and Liberal Learning invited two scholars of the natural sciences to lead workshops designed to help us reflect to the challenge of combining specialization in the disciplines with breadth of study -- a combination that Phi Beta Kappa has always encouraged.

Our fourth year will continue staging workshops with visiting scholars whose writings suggest that students of the liberal arts need to rethink representations and narratives central to modern liberal societies: on the one hand, the place of the books and other printed works in the story of a Western civilization rapidly changing as digital technologies transform our ways of knowing and communicating; and, on the other, the challenge of weaving honest confrontations of racial difference and racism into a modern democracy that is at once liberal and multicultural.

Click on the "2007: Tradition of Liberal Education," "2008: Liberal Learning in a New Century," and "2009: Rethinking Representation, Retelling Narratives" links at the left for more information on the last three years of deliberation initiative events. Co-Sponsored by the Beta of Colorado Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and the Crown Faculty Center, these events would not have been possible without significant support at various points from the Phi Beta Society, the Teagle Foundation, the Office of the Dean, Educational Technology Services, and several departments and programs.