The Teagle Foundation’s Board of Directors awarded grants totaling $1.6 million through its newly launched initiatives, Pathways to the Liberal Arts and Education for American Civic Life.
The Pathways to the Liberal Arts initiative supports access to and success in liberal arts education, particularly for students from underserved backgrounds who might not ordinarily attempt a rigorous liberal arts program. The Teagle Board approved awards for projects that strengthen access to the liberal arts in the transition from high school to college and from two-year community colleges to four-year independent colleges, as well as projects focused on strengthening the rigor and quality of liberal arts pathways at two- and four-year institutions.
With Teagle support, Miami University in Ohio and Villanova University in Pennsylvania will invite underserved high school students to college to study humanity’s deepest questions about leading lives of purpose and civic responsibility. These programs are modeled on the successful “Freedom and Citizenship” program established by Columbia University and the Double Discovery Center under the auspices of Teagle’s College-Community Connections initiative. Miami and Villanova join a set of grantees developing similar programs at Yale University, Ursinus College, Carthage College, and the University of Rochester that dramatically improve college readiness, admission prospects, and college graduation persistence while building interest in humanistic issues and habits of civic engagement that persist during and after college.
The Teagle Foundation’s push to promote transfer access to the liberal arts is proceeding through two different approaches: one involving dual enrollment in early college high schools, and one involving public two-year community colleges and four-year independent colleges. The Bard Early Colleges Network will use Teagle support to ensure that college-credit bearing coursework completed by their students in Early College High School will be accepted by four-year colleges as credits towards fulfilling requirements for the baccalaureate. The New England Board of Higher Education, in collaboration with the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts, and Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Rhode Island, is building a transfer guarantee framework for eligible associate degree holders interested in pursuing liberal arts baccalaureate degree programs at independent colleges.
The Teagle Foundation also continues to support efforts to strengthen undergraduate education at two- and four-year institutions. At Georgia State University – an institution widely recognized as an engine of social mobililty for low-income African American students – Teagle funds will support the enhancement of its already successful freshman learning community. In the freshman learning community (FLC), incoming first-year students are grouped by cohort into a predetermined course schedule so students are assured they are enrolled in courses required for their programs of study and they can begin building peer-to-peer support networks at the very outset of their college careers. With Teagle support, Georgia State will ensure that all incoming students – which number over 6,000 – are placed into thematically focused FLCs and will participate in project-based learning (e.g., undergraduate research) starting in their first semester. This process is expected to improve the core experience for Georgia State students and create project-based opportunities for students pursuing liberal arts degrees who rarely have a chance to do collaborative work under close faculty supervision in a large research institution.
Finally, the Foundation has added to to its growing portfolio of grants under the Education for American Civic Life initiative with an award to Longwood University, in partnership with the R.R. Moton Museum, for offering intensive professional development to their faculty teaching in the newly launched Civitae Core curriculum.
Grants Awarded
Pathways to the Liberal Arts
Villanova University
Civitas Through Caritas: Cultivating Love, Cultivating Citizens
$210,000 over 36 months to engage low-income high school students with classic texts in the humanities and thereby help them to become both successful college students and active participants in American democracy.
Miami University
Student Citizens
$290,000 over 36 months to engage low-income high school students with classic texts in the humanities and thereby help them to become both successful college students and active participants in American democracy.
Bard Early Colleges
Bridge to the BA
$200,000 over 30 months to ensure high school graduates from the Bard Early College High Schools have college-level credits that count towards the baccalauareate once they matriculate into four-year institutions.
New England Board of Higher Education
New England Independent College Transfer Guarantee
$300,000 over 36 months to the New England Board of Higher Education, in partnership with the independent college associations of three states – Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island – to implement the New England Independent College Transfer Guarantee to assure acceptance at an independent nonprofit four-year institution for students graduating from community colleges with associate degrees in the liberal arts.
Georgia State University
Implementing Experiential, Project-Based, Interdisciplinary Curriculum (EPIC) in the Liberal Arts
$300,000 over 36 months to extend Georgia State University’s successful freshman learning community (FLC) model – which has been shown to dramatically improve retention and graduation – to include incoming two-year students in addition to its four-year students, and to use this as an opportunity to strengthen the FLC experience for all students.
Education for American Civic Life
Longwood University
Lessons in Democracy: Longwood’s Faculty Development Institute at the Moton Musuem
$100,000 over 18 months to ensure that Longwood University, in partnership with the R.R. Moton Museum, can offer high-level professional development to their faculty teaching in the newly launched Civitae Core curriculum
Special Projects
GraduateNYC
College Completion Innovation Fund
$100,000 over 36 months toward the “College Completion Innovation Fund,” which will support projects that seek to address undergraduate transfer student success and increasing overall momentum and persistence to graduation in New York City.
Warrior-Scholar Project
Academic Bootcamp Expansion
$100,000 over 12 months to support two one-week humanities focused boot camps at Syracuse University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
About the Teagle Foundation
Founded in 1944, The Teagle Foundation works to support and strengthen liberal arts education, acting as a catalyst for improvements in teaching and learning in the arts and sciences. It sees such an education as a prerequisite for rewarding work, meaningful citizenship, and a fulfilling life.
Contact:
Maggy Ralbovsky
Executive Vice President and Managing Director
RW Jones Agency
Office: 603-756-4111
maggyr@rwjonesagency.com