NACU Secures Grant to Engage Campuses in Teagle’s Cornerstone Initiative

The Teagle Foundation has awarded a $25,000 dissemination grant to the New American Colleges and Universities (NACU) consortium to develop and administer a series for academic leadership and faculty to learn about The Teagle Foundation’s Cornerstone: Learning for Living (CLL) initiative and to discuss how it could be implemented on their campuses. The Teagle Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) are jointly sponsoring this initiative to revitalize the role of the humanities in general education.

“Encouraging students to ask questions about meaning and purpose in life, and about how to organize a just society—and to do so with the help of searching works and caring teachers—is essential for a rewarding college experience and ultimately for the health of American civic life,” said Andrew Delbanco, president of the Teagle Foundation. “Yet the humanities, which pose such questions, are languishing on many campuses. Our partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities to co-sponsor the Cornerstone: Learning for Living grant program aims to foster deep discussions in and beyond the classroom about formative ideas in our multicultural world, and thereby to help students grow into reflective adulthood.”

Established in 1995, NACU campuses have a long history of collaboration and knowledge-sharing among its institutions. NACU anticipates integrating CLL into its academic learning communities, professional development institute for faculty and academic leaders, and provosts’ retreat. It will also highlight the Teagle initiative in its podcast–Connect, Collaborate, Champion–and through its Champions webinar series to reach a broader audience of administrators, senior leaders, and higher education enthusiasts.

“By integrating CLL into our existing programs, we are able to leverage an established, trusted space for faculty to reflect, collaboratively and candidly, on how they are helping students, especially those in pre-professional majors, strengthen critical thinking, problem-solving, evidence-based reasoning, communication skills, and other core liberal learning outcomes,” said Sean Creighton, president of NACU.

NACU will begin its CLL work in summer 2021. In addition to providing education about the desired goals of CLL, the primary goal will be to engage NACU institutions in collaborative thinking on ways to advance this Teagle initiative on their own campuses.