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Vision
Vision
We believe that meaningfully engaging with the humanities is transformative – both on a personal level, and culturally. Confronting transformative texts, learning from them, and questioning them while allowing them to question us, enables us to think both more constructively and more critically about our world. In faculty guided discussion-based classrooms, students of all backgrounds can undertake the adventure of encountering transformative texts directly. Our experience with these courses has convinced us that through the implementation of discussion-based learning, students become active collaborators in their own education. They learn to approach difficult texts and complex issues thoughtfully. They find their voices in classes where they are listened to respectfully and encouraged to engage across various differences, where they learn to work with their peers to form a community of inquiry where everyone’s voice matters in a collaborative search for truth. This collaboration of students in discussion-based courses mirrors the civic participation of citizens in a functioning democratic society. It is this education that The Great Questions Foundation aspires to bring community college students across the nation.
Currently, about 44% of undergraduates nationwide are enrolled in public two-year institutions, and among all students who completed a degree at a four-year institution, 49% had been enrolled in a two-year institution sometime within the past ten years. In some large states like California , Florida, and Texas, the percentages are much higher: in these states the percentage of former community college students among bachelors earners are 61%, 64% and 75%, respectively. More Given that a student’s exposure to general education is often during the first two years of higher education, strengthening our vision of the humanities at community colleges is essential. It is impossible to transform general education in the United States meaningfully without the inclusion and leadership of Community College faculty.
Our vision focuses most of all on empowering teaching faculty, who are responsible for shaping and delivering curricula, and whose passion brings syllabi to life in the classroom. We seek to engage directly with and to support and mentor Community College faculty in the refocusing of high-enrollment, required general education courses around the discussion-based study of transformative texts that have been identified by Community College faculty as particularly suitable for early academic engagement. There are several elements of our vision: the development and maintenance of a list of core transformative texts identified by faculty representatives from several institutions as appropriate for the community college classroom, along with a website allowing faculty to easily explore and sort these texts according to subject matter and questions raised and showcasing gen-ed syllabi using core transformative texts, student-centered study questions and other teaching resources; the establishment of summer course redesign workshops; partnering with 4-year, liberal arts institutions on establishing in-person summer institutes on their campuses to train community college faculty leaders in the Liberal Arts; and the development of a structure to provide ongoing support for the faculty who have attended the institute as they lead efforts on their home campuses to redesign high-enrollment courses that fulfill core curriculum/general education requirements at their specific institutions. We aspire to convene annual conferences at which faculty who have participated in our programing gather to compare approaches and syllabi, strategize about increasing impact, consider and update the list of core transformative texts based upon classroom experience.
If you would like to learn how you may contribute to the furthering of our vision, please contact our Executive Director, Ted Hadzi-Antich Jr at ted@tgqf.org.
The Great Questions Foundation seeks to promote liberal education and core-text and discussion-based learning at the community college through supporting faculty development and course redesign and helping to establish and support core-text programs and courses.
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