Grant Summary
$24,000 over five months for a planning grant to bring about the curricular integration of liberal arts into engineering through the use of “public sphere pedagogy.” Pioneered at California State University-Chico, this approach aims to connect students’ academic work with hands-on involvement with key civic issues. Faculty link students’ usual sequence of reading, research, and writing to pressing public issues in their local community. Students then enter public spaces to share their research through dialogue and presentations, engage with community members over shared concerns, and construct action plans to connect their coursework to civic activity. This project broadens the use of this approach at CSU-Chico while involving the institution in a partnership with three urban universities in Southeast Ohio – Cleveland State University, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Akron – to “export” and embed the model.