In the late 2000’s, a Rhodes College professor took his students in a course called “Death and the Afterlife” to the previously-forgotten Zion Cemetery in Memphis, engaging with local community groups to support the burial site’s restoration. Meanwhile, a professor at Allegheny College taught an “Environmental Geology” class that engaged students in examining water and community health outcomes.
Both of their efforts were supported through one of Project Pericles’ earliest faculty programs, the Periclean Faculty Leadership Grant. Today both are college presidents: Milton Moreland at Centre College and Ron Cole at Allegheny College.
In the earliest days of Project Pericles, Periclean campuses each built their own community-engaged civic learning programs, sharing a mission but little structure. In 2007, with support from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, Teagle Foundation, and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation, Project Pericles launched its first organization-wide program to fund faculty, in any discipline and on any campus, to build this work into their courses with more continuity.
The program rested on a simple yet powerful idea: if Project Pericles could fund faculty to advance community-based civic learning in their coursework, their students, communities, and institutions would benefit from deepened connections. The vision aligned with Eugene Lang’s view of “educating for citizenship,” connecting the “three C’s” of classroom, campus, and community.
The initial program, called the Civic Engagement Course (CEC) Program, awarded matching grants to 16 Pericleans to advance 44 courses. The program’s initial success led to the evolution into the Periclean Faculty Leaders Program, launched in 2010, which funded 26 faculty members in the inaugural term.
While the program advanced student learning outcomes and institutional priorities, it also contributed to faculty professional development. Milton Moreland and Ron Cole are exemplars. Today, as College Presidents, their experiences as community-engaged faculty shaped, and continue to inform, their work.
Read the first profile of Milton Moreland.