Thursday, March 11, 2010, the Boston Athenaeum together with the College of Arts and Sciences, Suffolk University present the second event in the 2010 Civic Discourse Series: Literacy and Democracy – Adult Literacy in the Digital Age.  The panel features Joanne Appleton Arnarud, Executive Director, First Literacy; Linda Nathan, founding Headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy; and Wick Sloane, Professor of Expository Writing, Bunker Hill Community College.  James Tracy, Headmaster of Cushing Academy serves as moderator.  To make reservations for this or any Civic Discourse event, please call 617-720-7600.

Joanne Appleton Arnaud,Ph.D., has taught political science at several colleges and universities, and was co-founder of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.  Arnaud’s work in continuing education and community development led her to become Executive Director of First Literacy, in 1989.  She has written about participatory education in From the Community to the Community and “Building on Community Strengths: A Model for Training Literacy Instructors.”

Linda Nathan, Ph.D., is the founding headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy, the city’s first and only public high school for the visual and performing arts.  She has won numerous awards including the Nadia Boulange Educator’s Award, the Inspire the Future Award, and was named a 2007 Barr Foundation Fellow.  Her articles have appeared in Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, Horace and many other publications.  Linda is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has recently written a book about teaching and leadership in public schools, The Hardest Questions Aren’t On the Test.

Wick Sloane is a professor of expository writing at Bunker Hill Community College, in Boston.  Outside the classroom, he takes on odd jobs to investigate higher education from the perspective of financially disadvantaged students.  He received a fellowship from the Hechinger Institute at Columbia University to research finance and equity in the community college system.  Professor Sloane has written a pamphlet, Common Sense, declaring that the four-year bachelor’s degree is obsolete.

James Tracy, Ph.D., is headmaster of Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts.  He served as headmaster at Boston University Academy and on the faculty of the Hotchkiss School. Tracy was also a visiting fellow in the Department of History at Yale University.  He has been a leader in the independent school community and has written extensively on educational issues.