About This Project
The Mellon Project is a major initiative at Hunter College that focuses on our undergraduate curriculum, particularly the general education and graduation requirements. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Project provides Hunter faculty, administrators, professional staff and students with a special opportunity to come together to reflect and improve upon the educational experience of our undergraduates in response to changes in everything from the forces of globalization and breathtaking advances in technology to changes in the disciplines and the academy to changes in the characteristics of college students and college professors.
The driving interest is to stimulate a vision of General Education that honors our noble mission while preparing our students to lead productive and rewarding personal, professional, and civic lives in the new century. We aim to embrace a coherent and challenging curriculum that is easy to comprehend, communicate, implement, and champion.
Goals
- Engage the college community in review and reflection.
- Deliberate the goals of general education.
- Create a mission statement for general education that reflects the values of the college and its faculty.
- Articulate and communicate the knowledge, skills, and experiences essential to general education, and develop a framework for achievement.
- Study key factors that contribute to student success, retention, and ease of transfer into the college.
- Develop a process to facilitate on-going programmatic assessment for general education.
- Specify resources and infrastructure necessary for creating, sustaining, and revising an innovative, dynamic, and effective general education program.
Activities
The Mellon Project will serve as a locus for activity and as an active and informed resource in support of a quality General Education at Hunter. It will
- Examine and stimulate campus-wide deliberation of the current requirements
- Sponsor forums on alternative approaches
- Organize workshops and symposia on specific challenges
- Create an interactive intranet site that will keep the Hunter campus community up to date on Project happenings and enable members to share their views. The Resource pages provide references and links to on-line and printed materials in a wide variety of categories that fall within the rubric of General Education. They also contain information on effective tools and practices.
Provost Vita C. Rabinowitz is overseeing the Mellon Project. Christa Acampora, Associate Professor of Philosophy, is chair of the Project Steering Committee, made up of faculty at Hunter.
The Steering Committee is responsible for establishing Project priorities, studying critical issues, and planning activities that engage the Hunter community and advance Project goals. In November 2007, the Mellon Project Steering Committee entered a formal relationship with the Hunter Senate, which will enhance collaboration and ensure timely deliberation and progress.