The Liberal Arts Endeavor: Celebrating a Quarter Century of University Studies at Portland State

This year marks the 25th anniversary of University Studies (UNST) at Portland State University, an engaged general education program born in the budget crisis of the 1990s and nurtured by the enduring commitment of students, faculty, and administrators. These visionaries put the core values of the urban service mission of Portland State into intentional practice. Likewise, in advancing a vision of a new general education, the Journal of General Education has sought to highlight and amplify pedagogical practices, institutional habits, and curricular innovation that empower students, faculty, and community members to create more just and thriving communities in a complex, dynamic, and interconnected world. We recognize that UNST at Portland State embodies the core virtues of the arts of liberty—the ability to communicate with eloquence, embrace diversity with grace, perceive globally with imagination, and respond to complexity with nuance. Thus, it’s only natural that the Journal would devote special attention to UNST as a model of general education reform.

Indeed, the Journal has provided a venue for students, faculty, and administrators to reflect upon and develop UNST from the program’s inception. Beginning with the initial report in 1994 on “A Model for Comprehensive Reform in General Education,” by C. R. White, over time the Journal has sought to uncover the difficulty, joy, and great importance of weaving our core educational commitments into the general education curriculum.¹

In 1999 we followed up with “The Portland State University Studies Initiative: General Education for the New Century,” a special double issue of the Journal that focused on some of the signature elements of the program after its first five years. These elements included their teaching fellows, peer and graduate mentors, and interdisciplinary inquiry clusters.² The table of contents for both issues includes:

• Volume 48, issue 2 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/i27797405)

• L. Rennie-Hill and M. A. Toth, “Welcome to This Special Issue” 63–64

• M. A. Toth, “A Brief Overview of University Studies” 65–67

• A. Weikel, “The Origins of University Studies” 68–74

• C. R. White, “Conceiving University Studies” 75–81

• R. Jessen, C. Ramette, and M. Balshem, “Practices for Engaging Student Learning: Classroom Observations” 82–89

• M. J. Flower, “Centering the Program: Clusters of Inquiry” 90–96

• Senior Capstone Class, “The Senior Capstone Experience: Voices of fhe Students” 97–102

• J. Poracsky, E. Young, and J. P. Patton, “The Emergence of Graphicacy” 103–10

• L. A. George and J. C. Straton, “Approaching Critical Thinking Through Science” 111–17

• D. A. Lieberman and C. L. Goucher, “Multicultural Education and University Studies” 118–25

• Volume 48, Issue no. 3 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/i27797418)

• M. A. Toth, “Welcome to This Special Issue” 137

• A. Franklin and T. Wolk, “Greater Vision with Two I’s: A Faculty-Peer Mentor Relationship” 138–45

• M. P. Latiolais and J. W. Tuleya, “A Conversation on the Faculty-Mentor Relationship” 146–49

• S. J. Didier and L. Rennie-Hill, “Peer and Graduate Mentors: Degrees of Difference After Four Years of Mentoring” 150–57

• S. C. Reece, “The Writing Requirement Moves: From the English Department to University Studies” 158–67

• B. Boesch, G. Dillon, L. Rennie-Hill, and T. Taylor, “The Trials of Transition: Frankenstein Meets the Transfer Student” 168–75

• R. H. Beyler, M. Halka, Y. Labissi, L. Lipari, S. C. Smallman, and J. M. Smith, “The Teaching Fellows Program: Transformations in Identity, Pedagogy, and Academe” 176–87

• S. C. Smallman, “New Literacies: Introducing Technology Into University Studies” 188–95

• D. Pratt, “Looking In: Notes from a Visiting Scholar” 196–207

• B. A. Holland, “Change and the Urban University: What’s in This for the Rest of Higher Education?” 208–11

• L. Rennie-Hill and M. A. Toth, “The Continuing Challenge: An Afterword” 212–15

From the beginning, UNST at Portland State has been informed and enriched by an openness to critical, engaged conversations from a wide diversity of perspectives. As Leslie Rennie-Hill and Michael Toth summarized in the afterword to that early double issue of the Journal:

We have come to...