The Conrnerstone: Learning for Living

Overview

The Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative is inspired by a successful program model developed at Purdue University, which has a two-semester “Transformative Texts” sequence in their first year under the mentorship of tenure-track faculty.

Aims:
1.Reinvigorate the role of the humanities in general education, and in doing so, expose a broad array of students to the power of the humanities; 
2. Help students of all backgrounds build a sense of belonging and community; strengthen the coherence and cohesiveness of general education; 
3. Increase teaching opportunities for humanities faculty.

This initiative is dedicated to the proposition that transformative texts—regardless of authorship, geography, or the era that produced them—perform a democratizing function in giving students the analytical tools and historical awareness to interrogate themselves as well as the culture and society by which we are all partially formed.

Two curricular components of the Cornerstone program model are especially notable. 
1. Gateway courses aimed at incoming students that are anchored in a common set of transformative texts help build intellectual community among students as well as faculty through a common learning and teaching experience.

2. Thematically organized clusters of courses that bring humanistic inquiry to problems in business, health, engineering, and other technical fields help students appreciate that technical problems cannot be addressed exclusively through technical solutions.

Criteria
•    A faculty-led and faculty-owned initiative
•    A common intellectual experience anchored in transformative texts for incoming students
•    Coherent pathways through general education
•    Student reach, particularly for STEM and other pre-professional majors
•    Sustainability
•    Assessment
•    Dissemination

Requests for grant support will be considered following a two-stage application process. First, we ask that prospective grantees share brief concept papers, whether they are interested in planning or implementation support. After review of the concept papers, a limited number of applicants will then be invited to submit full proposals. 

All concept papers should list two co-PIs who are tenured or tenure-track faculty and include a provisional list of faculty members who are interested in teaching with transformative texts. (Institutions that do not have traditional tenure should name faculty who have renewable multi-year appointments.) There is no need to include a budget at the concept paper stage.

Application Process: Concept papers for planning and implementation awards must be submitted by December 1, 2024 to [email protected]. Applicants will receive status notifications by February 2025. Applicants who are invited to submit proposals will be expected to finalize their applications by early April 2025. Work supported by the grant may begin as early as summer 2025.

The concept paper should provide a sketch of the project, with an eye towards meeting the criteria discussed above for faculty-led curricular reform and longer-term sustainability. 

Award Information: Implementation grants of varying amounts, up to $300,000 over 24 months, will be made to each funded project participating in this initiative. The size of the implementation grant award will be based on the scope of the project. Implementation grants provide support for institutions to enact concrete plans for comprehensive and sustainable curriculum development or redesign efforts.
Planning grants up to $25,000 over 6-12 months. Planning grants may be used to cover such expenses as compensation for faculty members on the planning team and travel to annual faculty professional development institutes and other similar professional development opportunities.

Contact Information: Please contact Loni Bordoloi Pazich, program director for institutional initiatives at the Teagle Foundation, at [email protected] with questions about the Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative.