Cornerstone: Learning for Living

Description of Award

Inspired by a successful program model developed at Purdue University, The Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative aims to reinvigorate the role of the humanities in general education, and in doing so, expose a broad array of students to the power of the humanities; help students of all backgrounds build a sense of belonging and community; strengthen the coherence and cohesiveness of general education; and increase teaching opportunities for humanities faculty.

This initiative is dedicated to the proposition that transformative texts—regardless of authorship, geography, or the era that produced them—perform a democratizing function in giving students the analytical tools and historical awareness to interrogate themselves as well as the culture and society by which we are all partially formed.

Providing thematically organized pathways that link the humanities to students’ professional aspirations helps make general education more compelling and coherent. Such pathways help students see the salience of humanistic thinking from the outset of their undergraduate careers, combats the perception that the humanities are irrelevant for their future work, and encourages them to complete their coursework and stay on the path to graduation.

Revitalizing the place of the humanities in general education can also help to secure the future of the humanities professoriate. It has become clear that humanities departments, which at many institutions are shrinking relative to their counterparts in other fields, must find new ways to ensure that the humanities remain a vital aspect of undergraduate education. Teacher-scholars in humanistic fields will need to reallocate their time to engage non-majors in introductory General Education while also pursuing their more specialized teaching and research.

Award Types

Implementation grants
Up to $300,000 over 24 months

Planning grants provide support for faculty at participating institutions to achieve the following:

• establish criteria for inclusion of works of literature and philosophy and generate a consensus list of transformative texts, along with a policy for how texts from the consensus list will be used across sections of the gateway course, with an eye to creating a common intellectual experience for students
• design coherent pathways through general education
• lay the curricular groundwork for the proposed program, including achieving any necessary approvals by the appropriate academic governance committees
• engage the leadership and faculty of professional schools, where appropriate, so the program is accepted as part of their majors’ degree plans
• establish a clear strategy for faculty professional development and scale-up, particularly to ensure there are enough sections of the course(s) designated as the gateway to your program to ensure a significant share of the incoming undergraduate student body participates in a common intellectual experience
• whenever possible, pilot courses featuring transformative texts

Planning grants
Up to $25,000 over 6-12 months

Implementation grants provide support for institutions to enact concrete plans for comprehensive and sustainable curriculum development or redesign efforts. They may be used as follows:

• To provide one-time stipends for faculty time committed to developing their readiness to teach in core-text based courses; course releases to design and implement general education pathways; and other similar expenses likely to arise in a major curricular reform effort
• To defray the cost of outreach to academic advisors who help guide students in their course enrollment, particularly at large institutions where academic advising is usually carried out by professional staff instead of faculty
• To support the work of recruiting students, addressing library resources, and similar expenses

Criteria for Project Proposals

• A faculty-led and faculty-owned initiative
• A common intellectual experience anchored in transformative texts for incoming students
• Coherent pathways through general education
• Student reach, particularly for STEM and other pre-professional majors
• Sustainability
• Assessment
• Dissemination

Timeline

• Concept papers due date: December 1, 2024
• Notification Status: February 2025
• Project proposal (By invitation only): April 2025