Grant Summary
$225,000 over 24 months to create a first-year learning community organized around transformative texts; embed transformative texts in a series of student success seminars; and launch a new certificate program. All students at Virginia Union register for a one-credit student success seminar each semester, for a total of eight such seminars over their four-year course of undergraduate study. The seminars are designed to help orient students to college and to cultivate leadership development. The second seminar taken in the second semester of the first year will be paired with an English composition course also required of all students, creating a shared learning experience (in other words, students will be registered in cohorts and will take their leadership seminar and English composition together). The series of leadership seminars and English composition courses total 11 credits. Virginia Union will launch a new 14-credit certificate that can be completed with those 11 credits and an additional elective course in the humanities that engages transformative texts in dialogue with contemporary issues.