Grant Summary
$225,000 over 24 months to provide incoming students with a common intellectual experience in a first-year two-semester seminar and launch the REACH certificate and Global Humanities minor. These courses will be redesigned to incorporate six common texts over the course of the academic year while also providing students with an orientation into Tuskegee's institutional history, resources, and the skills students need to cultivate to be successful in college. Students will be encouraged to participate in a series of out-of-class events (e.g., guest lectures related to the key texts of the first-year seminar) and complete a set of writing, community engagement, and creative activities in order to earn the REACH certificate; the certificate may be earned by the end of the first year, providing students with a sense of momentum and intended to encourage their persistence into the second year. Students will have the option to complete a strand of global humanities general education courses that also serve as the building blocks for a new 18-credit minor in Global Humanities; the minor both incentivizes taking a more coherent cluster of general education courses while also encouraging students to pursue additional coursework in the humanities. The intervention in the first-year seminar will reach the entire incoming class; Tuskegee aims to enroll at least 50 students in the Global Humanities minor by spring 2024.