Vassar is an awardee of the Teagle Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) joint grant program Cornerstone: Learning for Living, which seeks to revitalize the role of humanities in general education. This grant award will support conversation and planning focused on how we might use the First Year Writing Seminar (FYWS) to deepen faculty and student’s shared experience of transformative engagements with texts, the focus of the Cornerstone initiative.

Many students enter college deeply concerned about the most pressing issues of our time, including a changing planet, mental health, racial justice, and the role that technology may play in the coming decades to both help and harm our world. Through shared faculty conversations and collaboration as well as building a community of practice around the FYWS, Vassar intends to empower students to engage with the deep questions these challenges pose, by centering practices of close reading, and approaching writing—and the teaching of writing—as a social practice. Through this approach, students will build hope for a resilient future as they hone their skills to read closely, parse, collaborate, and persuade.

The project co-PIs are Bill Hoynes, Dean of the Faculty, and Lisa Brawley, Associate Dean of the Faculty. Jill Schneiderman, Professor of Earth Science, and Matthew Schultz, Director of the Writing Center and Adjunct Associate Professor of English, will serve as co-directors in the coming year. Kate Susman, Professor of Biology, played a key role in the development of the proposal, and other faculty who participated in proposal development are: Pinar Batur, Professor of Sociology; Mary Ann A. Cunningham, Professor of Geography and Director of Environmental Studies; Eve Dunbar, Professor of English; Jonathon Kahn, Professor of Religion and Director, Engaged Pluralism Initiative; Kenneth Livingston, Professor of Cognitive Science; Denise Walen, Professor of Drama; Zachary Roberts, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English; and Kerry Stamp, Assistant Dean of Global Partnerships and International Programs.