Community Colleges and the Future of the Humanities

The presentation discusses the construction of First-Year Experience courses: "Ethnography of Work" and "The Citizen and Society". These courses tie to the larger goal of establishing a strong foundation in the humanities through the NH Humanities Collaborative by establishing career exploration and college preparedness within an academic discipline. The curricula are grounded in the value of humanities by employing non-traditional pedagogical strategies to meet the needs of variety of audiences and transferring to four-year colleges as content-specific coursework. Student-led projects encourage the investigation of the world through the frameworks of workplace culture and the public sphere. "Ethnography" integrates the concepts typically covered in a first-year experience course within anthropological theory and methods to explore the culture of work.

"Citizen" continues the process, helping students look to public policy as training for active citizenship, using collaborative skills to achieve objectives. This two-part course combines a more traditional political science groundwork with activities in which students in groups research, plan, and propose a project of their choosing to tackle a community problem and benefit the commonwealth. The combination of these courses can provide first year community college students with real world experience, personal development, civic engagement, and student involvement in the humanities.