The Teagle Foundation’s Board of Directors has approved over $1 million in support of its ongoing initiatives to advance teaching and learning in liberal arts education.
Two grants were awarded under the Foundation’s Faculty Planning and Curricular Coherence initiative. Launched in 2014, the initiative funds projects that support faculty collaboration to create coherent and efficient curricula with goals and outcomes that are clear to students and other constituencies with a stake in the future of higher education. The latest grants to join the Foundation’s portfolio concentrate on the community college systems in California and Colorado and call on the power of funder collaboration to support systemic change. Foundation President Judith Shapiro explains, “Crafting streamlined curricular pathways means curtailing the burgeoning expenses of ever-expanding course offerings. Most important, it enables students to understand their own academic experience while also ensuring that they use their time and resources most effectively in advancing toward their degrees. These newly funded projects should be beneficial to institutions and students alike.”
Another grant was awarded to several member colleges of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Higher Education Consortium under the Liberal Arts and the Professions initiative, which aims to integrate liberal arts content and perspectives into professional undergraduate education. Finally, the Foundation contributed funds to the Digital Public Libraries of America under its Hybrid Learning and Residential Liberal Arts Colleges for its work to prepare and disseminate online resources that will expand access to important materials for students at colleges across the nation.
Grants Awarded
Faculty Planning and Curricular Coherence
Foundation for California Community Colleges, California Guided Pathways Project
$300,000 over 24 months to build capacity at 15-20 California community colleges to implement guided transfer pathways at scale while also working to model curricular reform for the 113-member California community college system.
Colorado Community College System and the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California, An Instructional and Assessment Model for Equity-Minded Curricular Redesign
$300,000 over 32 months to scale up curriculum reform in a phased approach and in a manner that links to pedagogical improvements in the teaching of mathematics. CUE will provide a series of webinars open to all Colorado community colleges along with a series of in-person workshops to streamline curriculum and strengthen pedagogy in mathematics.
Liberal Arts and the Professions
Southeastern Pennsylvania Higher Education Consortium (SEPCHE), Rosemont College, Neumann University, Immaculata University, and Chestnut Hill College, In Service: Strengthening Professional Formation through the Liberal Arts
$300,000 over 42 months to use the themes of social impact, social entrepreneurship, and corporate social responsibility to bring multidisciplinary perspectives to business education.
Hybrid Learning and the Residential Liberal Arts Experience
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Improving Education through Digital Collections: Building a Network of Engaged Educators
$150,000 over 24 months to create a professional development curriculum on using DPLA’s digital resources aimed at college faculty and instructional support staff from a variety of institutional settings (e.g., liberal arts colleges, community colleges).