About the Mellon 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.