A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping a Life of the Mind for Practice is an important work for all pharmacy faculty. In this work, the authors propose a new model of teaching that focuses on the interdependence of liberal education and professional training.

Historically, higher education has aimed to enhance the students’ possibilities of life: In the liberal arts and sciences by cultivating a “life of the mind”—the intellectual dimensions such as problem-solving capacities and critical thinking; and, on the other hand, in the professional schools by focusing on providing the means for students to “make something of themselves” by acquiring competence in specific skills. These authors endorse a third, different concept of educational purpose.

The book is based on the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching seminar that brought together educators from six professional fields along with faculty from the liberal arts and sciences. The authors’ relate how they learned to collaborate with one another across fields and, in the end, produced a new discourse of practical reason. Included are case studies of instructors from a wide array of disciplines.

Faculty, administrators, and those interested in the promise of higher education can glean valuable suggestions on how to put these insights to work in their own academic contexts.

By William M. Sullivan and Matthew S. Rosin

ISBN: 978-0-470-25757-9; 2008; 272 pages; hardbound