Small universities do not have all of the resources that larger ones do. There are fewer computers, fewer teachers, fewer technicians and of course less money. Charleston Southern University (CSU) seeks to be one of the smallest universities to meet national accreditation standards in computer science (ABET-CAC). This presentation will provide a…

Small colleges have unique challenges with respect to their information technology environments. It is easy to forget sometimes that small colleges are not simply small big colleges, and that IT needs to be considered in a particular way, especially because of its associated costs. For one thing, the senior administration at a small college may be…

Since magazine faculty must compress learning objectives into tightly packed syllabi, it is important for these syllabi to be effectively organized to focus on process and not on product. Some characteristics of the "perfect" syllabus are: (1) it is devised within a curricular context; (2) it reflects awareness of the capabilities and…

Discussion of professional status of the college librarian includes a definition of "colleges," decline of status of college library in American Library Association and Association of College and Research Libraries, crisis in higher education and implications for colleges, bias against "small" in academic librarianship,…

For the past several years Lynchburg College has developed Microsoft tutorials for use with academic classes and faculty, student and staff training. The tutorials are now used internationally. Last year Microsoft and Verizon sponsored a tutorial web site at http://www.officetutorials.com. This website recognizes ASCUE members for their wonderful…

As the cry for accountability rises from students to teachers, to parents and administrators, college and university teacher education programs find increasingly difficult demands are made upon them to demonstrate that these programs do, in fact, produce competent teachers. Yet, these programs remain assaulted by overlapping accrediting agencies…

If you wish to start an undergraduate professional and technical writing (PTW) program at a small liberal arts college, you will find good arguments for your project in the educational writings of Sir Francis Bacon. This paper gathers some of Bacon's educational ideas from various writings and applies them to the five stages of undergraduate…

This paper examines the opportunities of combining teaching, research, and service and highlights the inherent challenges of such an approach. By offering evidence on how professors at small liberal arts colleges can combine their research, teaching, and service responsibilities in ways that enrich student learning, the paper takes a role in…

This paper focuses on a specific topic and contention: Non-linear editing earns its place in a liberal arts setting because it is a superior tool to teach the concepts of how moving picture discourse is constructed through editing. The paper first points out that most students at small liberal arts colleges are not going to wind up working…

Observing that speech communication, by whatever term it is called, is now a popular major among the traditional liberal arts, this paper proposes an essential speech communication curriculum for the small, comprehensive college. The first part of the paper presents a rationale for the curriculum by exploring how the curriculum reflects (1) its…

Since American colleges and universities will need to hire about 500,000 faculty members in the next 25 years, it is important that speech communication graduate schools and current graduate students who will be in that labor pool think about the professional needs of small schools as potential employers of speech faculty. The academic background…

This paper examines the presumption that larger teacher education programs are superior to smaller ones, suggesting that many of the persistent problems of preservice teacher education are rooted in the large, bureaucratic organization so prevalent in current programming. The paper suggests that small program size makes possible the development…

Individual and institutional/environmental factors that distinguish "vital" professors from a "representative" group of their colleagues were investigated. Of concern was whether the faculty vitality concept discriminates among professors in meaningful ways (i.e., regarding their professional attitudes, practices,…

A small college's communication arts curriculum, designed for students either going on to graduate school or interested in meeting more immediate vocational needs, is described in this paper. The following components of the curriculum are discussed: (1) use of field experience courses, (2) use of on-campus "practicum" courses and extra-curricular…

This paper discusses the problems and benefits of conducting research in a small institution. Problems related to personnel, finances, expertise, and credibility, and advantages such as communication and cooperation are described. The University of Lethbridge has created a common data-gathering system, QAULTEP (Qualitative Analysis of the…