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Mellon Curricular PathwaysAccording to the Mellon Foundation, today’s undergraduate students lack a “bird’s eye view of the curriculum.” Because “important questions are often found on the frontiers where disciplines converge,” Mellon sought proposals from liberal arts colleges that would favor “commitments to the college as a whole, as an intellectual landscape rather than a collection of departments.” Last May, Mellon awarded the College a grant of $1 million over the next three years to unify our institutional mission by developing curricular pathways for students outside of their majors. The Pathways Grant focuses on four interdisciplinary programs that award concentrations in: Community and Global Health, Human Rights and Humanitarianism, Urban Studies, and Global Citizenship. The Grant will allow for the creation and expansion of new courses, student/faculty research collaborations, enhancements to civic engagement and study abroad opportunities, faculty development seminars and workshops, and campus-wide events that encourage inquiry across disciplines. In addition, the Grant will support innovations in advising that help move students toward a more coherent academic experience. The Pathways Grant Steering Committee includes the faculty who direct of each of the four programs, along with the staff who direct the Civic Engagement Center and the Internship Programs. The College supports three other “transinterdisciplinary” programs that are not funded by the Pathways Grant. These are: Middle Eastern Studies and Islamic Civilization (MESIC), African Studies, and Legal Studies. For more information, please contact the co-directors
of the Pathways Grant: Karin Aguilar-San Juan (sanjuan@macalester.edu)
or David Lanegran (lanegran@macalester.edu). |
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