“Community College and the Future of the Humanities”
#humsCC

Convened by LaGuardia Community College and the Graduate Center,
City University of New York

October 18 and 19, 2018

Community colleges are redefining the importance and centrality of the humanities to the lives of the “new majority” of students, both during their academic careers and after graduation. To explore and celebrate the role of humanities within community colleges and across the broader landscape of higher education, the CUNY Humanities Alliance invites proposals from college students, graduate students, faculty, and administrators for interactive sessions at “Community College and the Future of Humanities” conference. We seek a wide diversity of voices, perspectives and positions, and strongly encourage applications from scholars of color, people with backgrounds historically underrepresented in the academy, and people with direct experience in community colleges.

 

About the Conference

The conference will provide an opportunity to explore how the humanities are taught in community colleges and how the humanities affects the daily lives and career choices of the “new majority” students enrolled in community colleges. The conference will demonstrate the critical importance of community colleges in the landscape of higher education, and examine the human, structural, and institutional barriers faced by contemporary community college students and faculty.

The conference will further explore the possible connections between graduate education and community college teaching. Given that more than 50% of undergraduate students attend community colleges, doctoral students stand to benefit from preparation for careers at community colleges and other teaching-intensive institutions. The CUNY Humanities Alliance and other similarly-focused programs supported by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation serve as case studies of innovative partnerships between research institutions and community colleges committed to providing the next generation of scholars and educators with a grounded understanding of the theory and practice of student-centered pedagogies.

The conference will include keynote addresses and interactive workshops in which participants will learn and share their experiences with, approaches to, and ideas about the following topics:

• Innovative Pedagogies: Community College Pedagogy and Curricula in the Humanities
• Transfer and Continuity: Pathways between Community and Four-year Colleges
• Diversity and Inclusion: Learning and Life Circumstances of the “New Majority” College Student
• Value of Humanities: examining, articulating, and affirming humanities education in the lives and careers of students, and for the broader public
• Research and Professional Pathways: Connecting interests, research, teaching, and professional development

 

About the CUNY Humanities Alliance

With generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Graduate Center and LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY) created the CUNY Humanities Alliance, an ambitious new partnership dedicated to training Ph.D. students in the most successful methods for teaching humanities courses in some of the country’s most diverse undergraduate classrooms, while simultaneously broadening and strengthening access to and engagement in the humanities for community college students. Graduate Center doctoral students train with LaGuardia Community College master faculty and receive robust professional development from faculty and administrators at both institutions, before implementing their newly-acquired skills to teach their own classes at LaGuardia. The LaGuardia students in our humanities courses and LaGuardia Mellon Humanities Scholars program are given new opportunities and enrichment activities to improve their understanding of the humanities and the pathways that lead to completion of their degrees. For more information about the CUNY Humanities Alliance, visit cunyhumanitiesalliance.org.

 

Call for Papers:

The CUNY Humanities Alliance invites workshop proposals from community college students, four-year college students, graduate students, mentors, faculty, and administrators to address one or more of the following topics:

• Innovative Pedagogies: Community College Pedagogy and Curricula in the Humanities
  • What teaching strategies are effective for different community college students?
  • How can graduate students best prepare to teach the humanities in community colleges?
  • What unique or non-traditional classroom strategies — for assignment design, assessment practices, curricular design, etc. — emerge from community college learning practices?
  • What can four-year colleges learn from the innovative pedagogies generated in community college classrooms?
  • How can we develop working partnerships across institutions to better exchange information and effective practices?
  • How can the use of technology create new opportunities in community college classrooms? What challenges or barriers does it create?
• Transfer and Continuity: Pathways between Community and Four-year Colleges
  • What experiences have students had with transferring between institutions, and how can the lessons learned be relayed to fellow students, faculty and administrators?
  • What strategies and programs have emerged, both at community colleges and four-year colleges, to promote continuity between student experiences at different schools?
  • How do graduate students and faculty experience teaching at community colleges before, after, or while teaching at four-year colleges?
  • How can inter-institutional agreements and articulation agreements get transparently communicated to (and shaped by) students?
  • How can technology be used to create more continuity between two-year and four-year colleges?
• Diversity and Inclusion: Learning and Life Circumstances of the “New Majority” College Student
  • What kinds of inclusion and exclusion are reflected in the classes students take at community college? Who gets to define this inclusion and exclusion?
  • How do assumptions about what “diversity” means shape teaching practices and the departmental policies that govern them?
  • How do the demographic differences between many graduate schools and community colleges impact pedagogical decisions?
  • Who are we recruiting into our institutions, and how are we conducting this recruitment?
  • How do structures of assessment (in classrooms and in tenure-track positions) impact recruitment and retention?
  • How does technology challenge or replicate systems of inclusion and exclusion in educational institutions?
• Value of Humanities: examining, articulating, and affirming humanities education in the lives and careers of students, and for the broader public
  • What encouragement and what conflict may accompany studying the humanities? How does this impact what curricula need to include?
  • How does the level of disciplinary separation in various graduate institutions pedagogically impact community college classrooms?
  • What methods for unlearning faculty’s own disciplinary silos can impact student experiences of discipline recreation?
  • How does the defunding of the humanities institutionally and nationally impact pedagogical practices that can redefine the humanities as much more than a luxury?
  • How can students, graduate students, and faculty communicate the value of the humanities to wider audiences? How could public scholarship be integrated into undergraduate and graduate curricula, as well as the tenure and promotion process?
• Research and Professional Pathways: Connecting interests, research, teaching, and professional development
  • How can classrooms and college programs better align students’ interests and research with their professional development and career choices?
  • How can community college students and graduate students be more involved in research and development of programs intended for them?
  • How can community college faculty balance significant teaching and service requirements with research?
  • What opportunities are available to advance the research of community college faculty members?
  • What do graduate students considering careers in community colleges need to know?
  • How can institutions better support the professional development of present and future faculty in teaching-intensive positions?

 

Format of Sessions

All sessions will be one hour long, and we welcome and encourage creative, participatory formats. Ideal sessions will be interactive and will provide attendees next steps, takeaways, models, or other practical implementation ideas for participants to take back to their home institutions.

We welcome submissions that include multiple presenters, particularly when the presenters represent different roles or institutions (for example, a proposal including a community college student, a graduate student from another institution, and professor or administrator from a third institution would be especially welcome). Preference will be given to submissions that include scholars of color, people with backgrounds historically underrepresented in the academy, and people with direct experience in community colleges.

Individuals are also welcome to submit presentation ideas and will be paired with others presenting on similar topics.

 

Submitting a Proposal

Please fill out the proposal form, which includes information for each of the presenters, a 200-word description of your proposed topic, and a 100-word description of your proposed format.

Proposals are due by March 31, 2018.