The Liberal Arts College at the Russian Presidential Academy for National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow is pleased to announce a GALA workshop Mapping the Liberal Arts to be held at the LAC (RANEPA) on 23-24 March 2018. The aim of the workshop is to map liberal arts provision and practices across GALA and identify focal points that could strengthen cooperation between partner institutions. All aspects are open for consideration, including administering programmes, teaching and learning, curriculum design and development. Mapping the Liberal Arts will bring together colleagues from across the GALA network to share their experiences of developing the liberal arts within different institutional and national contexts and to exchange ideas about the future of liberal arts education. The aim of the workshop is to map liberal arts provision and practices across GALA and identify focal points that could strengthen cooperation between partner institutions. All aspects are open for consideration, including administering programmes, teaching and learning, curriculum design and development. The workshop will also provide an opportunity to hear about individual stories of success and discuss common key issues and questions. The workshop will be split into three parts. The first part will aim to answer the question: at a time when many higher education institutions without a formal liberal arts curriculum apply liberal arts practices and methods, what makes liberal artts programmes and colleges distinctive and valuable? To this, we will aim to identify the ‘fixed’ and ‘variable’ features and ‘common denominators’ of liberal arts practice and that we see in those institutions as well as in formal liberal arts programmes. For the second part each participant will give a short presentation (15 minutes) about the impact and success of the liberal arts at their institution, followed by a general discussion aiming to define the key ‘unique selling points’ of each partner institutions’s liberal arts provision. The final part of the workshop will be dedicated to action planning, which will draw on the issues and challenges involved in developing liberal arts provision and practice as rasied by the worksop participants, and will look to enable dialogue and the sharing best practice between partner institutions. The result of the workshop will be a map of liberal arts provision and practices across the GALA network that will identify potential opportunities for advice, cooperation, and training, provide a springboard for related meetings and workshops, and help to inform individual institutional agendas and strategies. Such a liberal arts map will always be provisional but it will, we hope, be the first of several theoretical and practical workshops focused on liberal arts provision and practice across the network. We invite our colleagues from across the GALA network to register for a participation in the workshop by 31 January, 2018. The deadline for applications has closed. Here is the finalised program:

Program of the workshop Mapping the Liberal Arts of GALA

March 23, Friday

10.00 – 11.30 Welcome word and introduction to the workshop Mapping the Liberal Arts of GALA.

Participants’ presentations (Participants have up to 10 minutes to give a short

presentation about the impact and success of the liberal arts at their own institution.)

11.30 – 11.50 Coffee Break

11.50 – 13.20 GALA as a potential platform for a joint development of the Liberal Arts at the

member institutions. General discussion about the perspectives of the project.

General discussion aims to define the key ‘unique selling points’ of each partner

institution’s liberal arts provision.

13.20 – 14.35 Lunch

14.35 – 16.05 Brainstorm: modelling of potential joint projects dedicated to the development of the

Liberal Arts within the GALA network (participants work in small groups).

16.05 – 16.35 Coffee Break

16.35 – 18.00 Brainstorm results (each group has 5 minutes to present their results).

Reflection on the development of the project and its “mapping”. Identification of the

“fixed” and “variable” features and “common denominators” of liberal arts

institutions for a “map” of the project Mapping the Liberal Arts of GALA.

18.00 – 19.00 Free time

19.00 – 20.00 RANEPA Campus Tour

20.00 Welcome dinner

March 24, Saturday

09.00 – 10.30 Identification of possible parameters of the Map of the Liberal Arts of GALA

(clarification of the main concept and goals, administrative and organizational

frameworks, levels of access etc.)

10.30 – 11.50 Coffee Break

10.50 – 12.20 Development of the strategy of the project Mapping the Liberal Arts of GALA.

12.20 – 13.35 Lunch

13.35 – 15.05 Planning of the next steps of the project (2018–2019).

15.05 – 15.20 Coffee Break

15.20 – 16.50 Summary of the workshop and closing remarks