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 Purpose & History of ACCA
The ASSOCIATED COLLEGES OF THE CHICAGO AREA
is a consortium of 15 private liberal arts colleges that was formed in
1966 with Mark Trumbo, Dean of Aurora College, as the chairperson. Jerry
Baird of Argonne National Laboratory brought much of the energy and
vision to the consortium until his retirement in the early 1990's. ACCA's
primary objective is to promote collegiate education in biology,
chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, psychology,
sociology/anthropology, and business/economics by stimulating and
regularizing cooperative arrangements between the member colleges and
universities and government laboratories and other educational
institutions in the use of staff and facilities. The first divisions to
take advantage of the ACCA consortium were biology, chemistry, computer
science, mathematics, and physics. The social science divisions of
psychology and sociology/ anthropology became part of ACCA in 1986. The
Business/ Economics division was added in 1990.
The consortium is governed by a Board of Directors composed of the academic
deans and/or chief academic officers of the member institutions. The
activities for faculty and students are arranged by the faculty members
in their respective divisions of:
- Biology
- Business/Economics
- Chemistry
- Computer Science
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Psychology
- Sociology/Anthropology
Each of these divisions elects a chairperson to take the lead in
planning seminars and other activities for that discipline. Among these
activities are seminar series, cooperative courses with the Morton
Arboretum and the Shedd Aquarium, an annual Student Symposium, and a
newly added Pedagogy Symposium.
These cooperative activities between faculty members of the
various colleges and universities reach beyond the capabilities of any
individual campus to enhance education in the natural and social
sciences.
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