Northern Kentucky University was recently awarded a planning grant that will support humanities programs with teaching practices that close equity gaps, among other things.
The Cornerstone: Learning for Living Planning Grant will fund Becoming a STAR at Northern Kentucky University and Beyond: A Pathway through the Foundation of Knowledge General Education Program.
It is the first institution in Kentucky to have been awarded this nationally competitive planning grant supporting general education, an announcement said.
“Our faculty-led program will emphasize the best teaching practices for closing equity gaps, increasing students’ sense of belonging, and improving student success,” said Tonya Krouse, professor of English and Honors College first-year experience coordinator. “It will guarantee that more undergraduates will take courses with expert tenure-track and tenured faculty starting in the first semester that they enroll at NKU.”
Becoming a STAR at Northern Kentucky University and Beyond is a faculty-led initiative to energize the humanities and demonstrate their relevance to all undergraduates, especially those who do not pursue degrees in the humanities, the announcement said.
The program’s vision is to create a high-impact, coherent, intellectually challenging, and inspiring general education experience that mainly targets students interested in STEM-H (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Health sciences) and business career paths.
“We are especially excited to showcase how a strong foundation in the humanities can enhance creative problem-solving, communication skills, and intercultural competence for students in pre-professional major programs of study,” said Emily Detmer-Goebel, director of general education. “We look forward to creating something that benefits students, local communities, and employers in the region.”
The STAR acronym stands for:
- “Study transformative texts to discover lives and places outside their own experience.”
- “Think deeply and critically about their own identities concerning others, a task enabled by the transformative texts they study.”
- “Act responsibly in the communities of which they are a part, using classroom learning to inform non-academic endeavors.”
- “Reflect on those actions as part of a broader intellectual and social project of humanistic inquiry, which ties the pressing concerns of our current moment to a living past embodied by enduring works of literature, history, and philosophy.”
