The Teagle Foundation’s Board of Directors has awarded three grants to ongoing initiatives and special projects that promote liberal arts teaching and learning.
One grant was awarded under the Foundation’s ongoing Faculty Planning and Curricular Coherence initiative. Launched in 2014, this initiative supports projects that bring faculty together to create coherent and efficient curricula whose goals, pathways, and outcomes are clear to students and other constituencies with a stake in the future of higher education. To date, the Foundation has invested over $5 million dollars toward this effort. Foundation President Judith Shapiro explains, “With each funded project, we learn alongside our grantees. We endeavor to share lessons learned and thus refine our grant-making approach with each subsequent award. Curricular reform requires persistence and patience, and we are proud of the strides our partners continue to make.”
Another grant was made under the Liberal Arts and Professions initiative, which aims to integrate liberal arts content and perspectives into professional undergraduate education. The Foundation has also renewed funding to a program that aims to extend liberal arts education “beyond the academy” to prison populations, to enable them to pursue higher education when they are released, and to support their reintegration into the community.
Grants Awarded
Faculty Planning and Curricular Coherence
Maricopa County Community College District
Charting Clear Routes to Completion: Achieving Deeper Learning While Saving Students Time and Money
$300,000 over 36 months to support teams of faculty from Mesa, Phoenix, Gateway, and South Mountain Community Colleges to reshape curricula as part of a larger district-wide push to implement guided pathways at scale.
Liberal Arts and the Professions
Purdue University
Cornerstone Program for Integrating Liberal Arts and Professional Education
$175,000 over 24 months to scale up the “Cornerstone” program, a 15-credit undergraduate certificate focused in liberal arts disciplines that is specifically geared for the highly concentrated degree programs in engineering, management, and nursing.
Liberal Arts Beyond the Academy
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Prisoner Reentry Institute
$150,000 over 24 months to expand and enhance two direct-service initiatives of the Prisoner Reentry Institute: Prison-to-College Pipeline, a reentry program that provides college courses to prisoners within five years of release, and College Initiative, a program that promotes college access and success after release.