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Muriel Howard, President of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, spoke during the "Shaping Our Future" launch at the National Press Club

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You can now watch the video (approximately 2 hrs.) recorded during the September 4, 2012 launch of Shaping Our Future: How Can Higher Education Help Us Create the Future We Want? - A national conversation about the public purposes of higher education.   Through this initiative, students, faculty, administrators, employers, and members of the general public are invited to reflect on how colleges and universities might help the country tackle some of its most vexing problems. Shaping Our Future is organized by the American Commonwealth Partnership and the National Issues Forums.

The following is guest editorial that was written by Denise Dowling, denise.dowling@mso.umt.edu, Associate Professor and Chair, Radio-Television Department, at The University of Montana.

For the full list of suggestions and to listen to the audio.

The University of Montana is not a happy place to work these days.  We’ve had the wind knocked out of us as we’ve been pummeled with accusations of rape, complicity and cover up on our campus.  It’s forced a collective gasp from us, the employees of UM, for this is not the place we know. But there it is, like a hard, cold slap in the face.  Horrible things have happened here and now we must work through the calamity.

Journalism as a Democratic Art, a new collection of essays by public journalism pioneer Cole Campbell and edited by Tony Wharton, is now available from Kettering Foundation Press. Campbell, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 53, was an acclaimed journalist as well as a longtime Kettering colleague. Each piece in the collection expresses Campbell's belief that "people expect the press to help their communities solve problems." As one-time editor of the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and then the Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, Missouri, Campbell worked to align his profession with that belief, often facing considerable resistance from other journalists. Campbell's essays address a variety of subjects, including a partly-finished dictionary for journalists; timely essays written in the months after Hurricane Katrina and 9/11; and an interview by Jay Rosen, longtime professor of journalism at New York University.

This post was written by Diane U. Eisenberg

On December 5, 2011, some sixty persons – forum participants and representatives of various Congressional offices and national and state associations – met at the Hall of States on Capitol Hill to address “A Nation in Debt”, a featured issue on this year’s National Issues Forums (NIF) agenda.

Given the size of the group, it was decided to convene two forums in adjoining rooms. Forum participants included delegations from the Legacy Leadership Program at the University of Maryland, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) members from Victoria Falls, Maryland, and a student government class from Montgomery College, Maryland, thereby, adding an intergenerational perspective to the deliberations. One forum was co-moderated by Sharon Simson and Doris Goodlet of the Center for Public Life at the University of Maryland. The other forum was co-moderated by Bill Corbett and Beth Offenbacker, Center for Voter Deliberation of Northern Virginia. Michelle Scott, Montgomery College, served as recorder.