Projects
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Based on our discussions at the June 2022 PALAC meeting at Soka University of America, our group decided that one of the key initiatives for PALAC in the first year was a collaborative effort among the PALAC institutions to conduct research in global climate change and its impacts on marginalized communities, and to share resources among the institutions to help in teaching about global climate change. This project will also engage students in discussions about the topic to help foster dialog and plan for future collaboration that involves students.
As a first step in the process, we are hosting a set of resources useful for teaching about global climate change, compiled by Soka University of America professor George Busenberg. We invite PALAC professors and students to use these resources in their work, and we also welcome suggestions for additional resources, for shared teaching materials, and for papers that address this topic. We look forward to building up links to these additional resources and also reports about our student dialogs on global climate change in the coming semester.
Click here to view the Global Climate Change Resources page.
As part of the PALAC initiative, a shared understanding and articulation of the nature of liberal arts education is being created through our joint efforts. As liberal arts is translated to new countries and gets reformulated for the emerging realities of our century, it will begin to reflect the influences of the entire global community of educators, and also incorporate the values and traditions of a wide range of countries. As the PALAC initiative includes 8 liberal arts institutions from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and the US, we welcome contributions from PALAC to help further this discussion online and to wider audiences. Please do contact us if you would like to contribute articles or papers describing new developments in liberal arts at your institution and country.
One exciting facet of the effort is to collaborate as a co-editor with Brandon Conlon from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) on the Liberal Arts Global Lens site. Brandon Conlon began this site while he was based at NYU Shanghai, which is one of our PALAC institutions. Now with Bryan Penprase of Soka University of America, we hope that this site can begin hosting new articles and perspectives that reflect the new forms of liberal arts education at the PALAC institutions and beyond.