Editor's Note

Welcome to the Journal of General Education, Volume 57, Issue 4! In this issue, the authors consider several key questions using a variety of lenses for their investigation. Th e result is an issue that furthers our understanding of the field of general education.

In "Flow Writing in the Liberal Arts Core and Across the Disciplines: A Vehicle for Confronting and Transforming Academic Disengagement" Gute and Gute consider a question with which many educators find themselves struggling: How do we improve student engagement? While many efforts have been undertaken to examine levels of engagement (for example, through the good work being done by those associated with the National Survey of Student Engagement), many faculty find themselves confronted by students who are bored by a given topic or given class that is not in their major field of study. Gute and Gute consider flow writing as a possibility for engaging students and find it an effective tool for promoting engagement at the classroom level.

Drake, O'Rourke, Panttaja, and Peterson, in "It's Alive! Th e Life Span of an Interdisciplinary Course in the Humanities," argue that interdisciplinary humanities courses have a given life span. Given the cutting-edge nature of interdisciplinarity, this is an interesting argument that provokes thinking. In the end, the authors have useful suggestions for extending the life cycle of such courses.

Finally, in "A Comparison of an Introductory Course to sat/act Scores in Predicting Student Performance," Marsh, Vandehey, and Diekhoff consider the questions of what measures can identify at-risk students and how soon at-risk students can be identified. Th e results of their study are particularly interesting and may come as a surprise to many educators. Th e authors make an effective argument about how their results might be used to improve institutions.

I hope you will enjoy this issue and that in reading these works, you will be inspired to make your own contributions to the Journal of General Education!

For guidelines for submitting articles, see those contained in this volume or visit the following url:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_general_ education/information/guidelines.html.