Wednesday, April 11, 8:30-9:30 a.m.

How can residential liberal arts colleges adapt and effectively articulate their unique contributions in the midst of the challenges and opportunities facing higher education? As American institutions, how do these colleges imagine a new social contract with this country and the world? This session will examine challenges to this distinctively American approach to education and ask how liberal arts colleges, with their unique residential communities, can do more to develop individuals; manifest diverse, inclusive, and engaged community; and build new models of democratic communities in the world.

Rebecca S. Chopp
President, Swarthmore College

Since joining Swarthmore’s community as its president in 2009, Rebecca Chopp has focused her work on the college’s role in cultivating a global intellectual community that will create leaders in every field in the 21st century. Prior to Swarthmore, Chopp served as president of Colgate University, dean and Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School, and provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Emory University. [more]