AASCU magazine features SUNY Fredonia and its Red Balloon Project

Scott Richmond, reference and instruction librarian, works on the Red Balloon Book Dialogues display in Reed Library. This photo appears in the current issue of Public Purpose, AASCU's magazine.

SUNY Fredonia was one of five universities prominently featured in an article in the winter 2012 issue of Public Purpose, a publication of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, which gave perspectives on Re-imagining Undergraduate Education, the organization’s Red Balloon Project.

AASCU launched the Red Balloon initiative in 2010 to address three factors – declining resources, increasing expectations and rapidly evolving technology – that will seriously challenge undergraduate institutions as they have never been challenged before. Through the Red Balloon project, AASCU institutions were given the opportunity to work together to address dramatic educational challenges of the 21st century.

Articles outlining work being done on their campuses were accepted from SUNY Fredonia, California State University-Fresno, Indiana University/Purdue University-Fort Wayne, Jacksonville State University and Millersville University of Pennsylvania. 

Vice President of Academic Affairs Virginia Horvath wrote the article for Fredonia, in which she described two goals that the university pursued in its approach to the Red Balloon challenge. The goals were to engage faculty and staff in learning about influential perspectives in U.S. higher education, and build upon that knowledge to focus more deeply on planning for the campus learning environment.

Horvath, who will become president of SUNY Fredonia in July, also reported that the campus became engaged in three broad planning processes as a result of Red Balloon Book Dialogues, which were established to realize the goal of providing insight into perspectives of higher education.

A full-color photograph showing Scott Richmond, a reference and instruction librarian at Reed Library, with a Red Balloon display, was also included in the article, which appears in both print and online editions. The magazine is distributed to more than 400 colleges and universities.