Lumina Foundation Longitudinal Study With generous funding from the Lumina Foundation, the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) are recruiting 25 institutions to participate in a four-year longitudinal study of student learning. Using measures developed by CAE's Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), the study will assess the "value-added" effects of college and university attendance on three fundamental outcomes of liberal education: critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication. A Special Invitation to Participate Benefits Of Participation By participating in this unique research project, your campus will receive detailed information about the intellectual growth of your students, and will be a part of a larger study to understand the institutional, curricular and pedagogical components that promote powerful learning. Your campus will also become part of a consortium of institutions committed to explore best practices that support liberal learning. Requirements The innovative CLA performance measures require three-hours of testing time; all measures are administered on-line in college and university computer laboratory facilities. Each institution must recruit 300 first-year students (and 100 seniors in the first year of the study). In some cases the institution may choose to require participation during orientation week and or embed such testing within first-year and senior capstone seminars. Where this is not feasible, incentives for student volunteers are generally required and our experience has been that this may cost as much as $25-50 dollars per student. Costs The full costs of administering and scoring the performance measures, as well as full reporting of data to each institution after each testing session, will be borne by the Lumina project. Student incentives where necessary will be borne by the institution. Application Process Selection of campuses will take place in two steps: (1) A letter accepting this invitation to participate in the study by the institution-s president by March 18, 2005. Include in the letter a commitment to the four years of the project, the number of entering first-year students and a summary of the demographics of your undergraduate student population. (2) Selection of 25 campuses will take place by April 15, 2005 by a panel of AAC&U and CLA project staff. Send letters of interest to: Dr. Roger Benjamin, President Council for Aid to Education 215 Lexington Avenue, 21st Floor New York, NY 10016-6023 "Evidence-based reasoning is one of the most important outcomes of a good liberal education. By focusing on students- analytical, integrative and communication abilities, the CLA will help campuses tie their assessment programs to intellectual gains that have lasting value - both for students and for a knowledge-intensive society." Dr. Carol Geary Schneider President, Association of American Colleges and Universities