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Institutional Award Summer 2006

 
Surry Community College Receives Award for Excellence in
Critical Thinking From the Foundation For Critical Thinking, 2006

For the first time in its history, The Foundation For Critical Thinking has presented an institutional award for excellence in critical thinking. This award was presented to Surry Community College at the 26th International Conference on Critical Thinking (July 25, 2006 in Berkeley, California). This award was symbolically memorialized in a small replica of Rodin's famous sculpture, The Thinker.

This Institutional Award for Excellence in Critical Thinking was presented at the opening address and keynote session of the conference, which was attended by more than 400 international educators, government leaders, and business representatives. Surry Community College is the only college in the country, and indeed in the world, to ever receive this award.

This achievement redounds to the credit of the administration, faculty, staff, deans and department chairs who have fostered and supported this ambitious and important educational goal. The following statement was read during the presentation of the award:

"We would like, at this time, to give a special award for excellence in critical thinking. Really there are many of you who deserve an award. We recognize that.  But we thought it was time to single out an institution that has been working toward bringing critical thinking across the curriculum for a number of years. This is a higher education institution that began its struggle toward critical thinking approximately four years ago when they placed critical thinking at the heart of their reaccredidation process. They have developed an ongoing, innovative, long-term faculty development program. They have developed and are using effective faculty and student assessments in critical thinking. They have recently developed a critical thinking website that is exceptional. And they have sent 13 people to this year's conference, because they recognize that the struggle is ever before them, to improve, to reach deeper, to go further.

The institution receiving this award is a higher education institution. When we think of excellence in education, we often think of the Ivy League schools, the Harvards, and the Yales. But the institution receiving this award today is not Harvard. It is not Yale. It is not Stanford. It is not any of the Ivy League schools. Rather it is a community college in a small place called Dobson, North Carolina. It is Surry Community College.

I would like to invite Steve Atkins and Connie Wolfe to come forward to receive this award. Please join me in acknowledging the work of Surry Community College.

The struggle is ever before us to reach toward a substantive concept of critical thinking, to continually work to reach our students at a deeper and more meaningful level. This award indicates that the struggle is being taken seriously at Surry Community College.

We look forward to bestowing additional institutional awards for excellence in critical thinking in the future, as institutions continue to work toward achieving a substantive concept of critical thinking in, across, and beyond the disciplines."

 

To learn more about the Surry Community College critical thinking process and program, click here:

 

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Please do not pass this message by.

CRITICAL THINKING IS AT RISK.

Here are some of the big reasons why:

  1. Many people believe that critical thinking should be free and that scholars qualified to teach critical thinking should do so for free. Accordingly, they do not think they should have to pay for critical thinking textbooks, courses, or other resources when there is "so much free material online" - despite how erroneous that material may be.
  2. There are many misguided academicians, and some outright charlatans, pushing forth and capitalizing on a pseudo-, partial, or otherwise impoverished concept of critical thinking.
  3. Little to no funding is designated for critical thinking professional development in schools, colleges, or universities, despite the lip service widely given to critical thinking (as is frequently found in mission statements).
  4. Most people, including faculty, think they already know what critical thinking is, despite how few have studied it to any significant degree, and despite how few can articulate a coherent, accurate, and sufficiently deep explanation of it.
  5. People rarely exhibit the necessary level of discipline to study and use critical thinking for reaching higher levels of self-actualization. In part, this is due to wasting intellectual and emotional energy on fruitless electronic entertainment designed to be addictive and profitable rather than educational and uplifting.
  6. On the whole, fairminded critical thinking is neither understood, fostered, nor valued in educational institutions or societies.
  7. People are increasingly able to cluster themselves with others of like mind through alluring internet platforms that enable them to validate one another's thinking - even when their reasoning is nonsensical, lopsided, prejudiced, or even dangerous.
  8. Critical thinking does not yet hold an independent place in academia. Instead, "critical thinking" is continually being "defined" and redefined according to any academic area or instructor that, claiming (frequently unsupported) expertise, steps forward to teach it.

As you see, increasingly powerful trends against the teaching, learning, and practice of critical thinking entail extraordinary challenges to our mission. To continue our work, we must now rely upon your financial support. If critical thinking matters to you, please click here to contribute what you can today.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO CONTINUE OUR WORK.

Thank you for your support of ethical critical thinking.