From the Chair
This past year has reminded us, once again, that college students need an education that focuses on deeply human questions at stake in the study of the liberal arts. Liberal arts learning helps students develop their critical thinking skills to examine the claims of others, to formulate their own ideas, to situate them in contexts that expand understandings, and to argue effectively and empathetically.
From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and food crises around the world to partisan strife across America, recent events underscore the importance of the next generation being equipped to engage in civic life and protect democratic society. Liberal arts education provides a foundation on which students can learn how to disagree as they learn from one another. Iteratively, guided by their faculty, they develop a comfort that they can win over the minds of others and the confidence to modify their own thinking as they learn more.
The Foundation remains steadfast in its commitment to strengthen undergraduates’ engagement with the humanities and knowledge of American democratic institutions, help high school students prepare for a liberal arts education in college, and support students transferring from community colleges into four-year liberal arts institutions. Each of these initiatives ensures the Foundation's resources are reaching students who hail from diverse places, have a multitude of backgrounds and experiences, and matriculate into institutions with distinctive histories and missions.
The pandemic remained a force to reckon with and forced most Foundation activities to remain virtual or to operate in hybrid format. Despite these challenges, the Foundation, working with partner organizations, chalked up some notable achievements at the January 2022 annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges & Universities, where Teagle grantee Roosevelt Montás presented the Carol Geary Schneider Lecture on Liberal Education and Inclusive Excellence. His topic was “Liberal Education: For What and for Whom?” Questions from the audience and Montás’s comments in reply opened into an expanded conversation that continued the following day when AAC&U’s president, Lynn Pasquerella, moderated a panel including Montás on “Liberal Education’s Role in Preserving Democracy.”
Also featured at the AAC&U meeting was a panel convened by representatives of Teagle and the National Endowment for the Humanities on “Reinvigorating the Role of the Humanities in General Education: Insights from the Cornerstone: Learning for Living.” Five panelists from among the 35 institutions supported by the jointly-funded Cornerstone initiative provided insights about their campus projects. Key aims of the campus-based projects are to strengthen the coherence of general education and engage students in the humanities in ways that promote a sense of belonging and community.
Progress also came from joint efforts with the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations on the transfer pathways project -- a shared commitment to reduce equity gaps through statewide transfer initiatives. Perseverance through the pandemic resulted in promising plans being developed into funded projects for successful transfer from community colleges to four-year liberal arts institutions, aiming ultimately toward improvements in bachelor’s degree completion.
We encourage you to learn more about Teagle’s recent work described in this 2022 Annual Report and to share our pride in the aspirations and accomplishments of Teagle grantees and their students.
--Elizabeth S. Boylan, Chair