The Council for the Improvement of Collegiate Education and Management
Promoting a diversity of ideas on college campuses.
A College Degree Can Be Very Expensive, BUT GOOD IDEAS can be free!
Help Fight Wokeness at Your Alma Mater
CICEM wants to help by providing a greater diversity of good ideas than are often presented in the classroom. Students are our focus. We hope to facilitate Alumni, Contributors and interested Faculty in providing additional resources for the promotion of these ideas.
We welcome everyone who finds this web site. That said, our primary mission and focus is to improve the diversity of ideas on today’s American college campuses, with special interest in undergraduate education.
For some time, there has been a growing concern that students, even those paying mightily for their college degree, are being exposed to an increasingly narrow range of ideas, primarily liberal and radical. The first reaction of many was simply to no longer consider higher education a proper area of philanthropy. CICEM was formed to counteract both the trend of intellectual narrowing and the decision to end contributing to collegiate education. While some may label this effort “conservative” it is entirely educational and non-political with an interest in expanding the understanding of the rich cultural traditions and their intellectual underpinnings which we enjoy and from which we benefit.
As a result, this web site should be of interest to four specific kinds of people who are interested in widening the range of ideas at the collegiate level:
Students
Where a CICEM College Council has been formed, they will, at a minimum, be offered a free subscription to one of six publications. And there is no maximum that a Council can then expand in a wide variety of directions that they might choose.
Alumni of a particular college
Alumni of a particular college are encouraged to volunteer as a member of the College Council. An “alumnus” is defined as someone with at least two years association with a college as a student (undergraduate, graduate, post-doc}, professors (adjunct, assistant, associate or full professor) or administrator. A Council is formed when a minimum of five “alumni” each pledge $200 (or more) toward a kitty to provide gift subscriptions. Once a Council is established it may undertake many other programs..
Contributor
CICEM itself is not primarily in the business of seeking contribution to itself as an institution. While that might sound strange, our mission is to encourage resources directed entirely to students and expanding the range of ideas. Providing resources for subscription to publications is the only core program. Adding many other worthy publications, books, lectures, seminars and subsidies to attend other education activities are all possible. For the most part, the entire contribution is designed to go directly from contributor to the activity.
Faculty Friends
While college professors are welcome as Alumni and Contributors, if they so choose, a Faculty Friend is a more limited endeavor: simply to alert students who might benefit from CICEM’s core program of gift subscriptions to this program and web site. Volunteering for a more extensive role is also possible, such as leading a discussion group about a few select articles in these publications or related topics (in person or via Zoom).
An organizational note: CICEM is small but has ambitious hopes. As a result it is initially looking to form College Councils in relatively small, but better known colleges with a liberal arts bent. The very large mega-universities, even with the identical mission, will need a bigger configuration of a College Council, which will be the second stage. Since we do not expect to have a large organization with a required large budget, we expect to grow slowly while meeting the demand both for alumni (and others) and students eager to expand the diversity of ideas on campuses. We welcome comments and suggestions from any and all toward the furtherance of this mission.