Grant Summary
$240,000 over 36 months to offer DDC high school students an academically rigorous, college-level program focused on the theme of freedom and citizenship in ancient, modern, and contemporary thought, and to support DDC's college preparatory programming. Students enrolled in the program will participate in an intensive summer seminar developed by faculty in Columbia's American Studies Program; workshops on writing, oral presentation, and other skills; and a collaborative web-based project during the subsequent academic year on civic engagement in an upper Manhattan neighborhood. The seminar will explore ancient, early modern, and contemporary writings drawn from the Columbia College Core Curriculum and the introductory American Studies course. Students will examine a range of major literary, philosophical, and political documents, including selections from Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, John Locke, the Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, WEB Du Bois, John Dewey, Ralph Ellison, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The goal of the course is to equip students with critical tools to evaluate contemporary debates and participate fully in American public life as active and responsible citizens. Project highlights Summer 2009: DDC students debating the question of whether Columbia University should expand into the Manhattanville section of West Harlem.