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Consortium Membership Benefits Community Partners Critical Exchange Grants

Mission and History Board and Staff

Consortium Members

Allegheny College
American University
Arizona State University
Auburn University
Bates College
Bellarmine University
Brown University
California Institute of the Arts
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Carleton College
Clark University
Colgate University
Columbia College, Chicago
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Dominican University of California
Drew University
Eastern Connecticut State University
Emerson College
Emory University
Fordham University
Grand Rapids Community College
Hamilton College
Hampshire College
Indiana University-Purdue
University Indianapolis
Kennesaw State University
Lafayette College
Loyola University New Orleans
Macalester College
Marlboro College
Maryland Institute College of Art
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Michigan State University
Missouri State University
Nassau Community College
New York University
Northeastern University
North Carolina State University
Occidental College
Ohio State University
Oklahoma State University
Pennsylvania State University
Portland State University
Princeton University
Purdue University
Regis University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Richland College
Rutgers University
Southern Oregon University
Swarthmore College
Syracuse University
Tulane University
University at Albany, SUNY
University at Buffalo, SUNY
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
University of California, Davis
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California,
Santa Barbara
University of Delaware
University of Florida
University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
University of Iowa
University of Kansas
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of New Mexico
University of Notre Dame
University of Oregon
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at San Antonio
University of Virginia
University of Washington, Bothell
University of Washington, Seattle
University of Wisconsin, Madison
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Vanderbilt University
Virginia Tech
Wagner College
Wesleyan University
Western Kentucky University
Winona State University
Xavier University of Louisiana

To update member information, please contact us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagining America Consortium

2010 Membership Benefits

Imagining America depends on a lively consortium to enact its mission and support its purpose. The benefits of membership include:

Visibility and Communications
Membership in IA signals an institution's commitment to be a leader in public engagement.  IA's national profile brings visibility and the authority of a national consortium to the work of member institutions, crucial to advocacy for issues such as tenure policy around public scholarship. An excellent website provides links to each member campus and showcases programs at all of them in a rotating feature on the home page.  Biannual newsletters and conference presentations offer opportunities to publicize noteworthy public scholarship projects nationally.

Professional Development, Program Models, and Consultation
Membership in Imagining America supports, invigorates, and, on some occasions, catalyzes engaged work in the arts and humanities at and between member institutions. Close connections to IA's work can lead to innovation at home institutions.

Faculty at member institutions may apply to be Research Fellows in IA Collaboratories, each made up of a representative from our host campus and four faculty members from different member institutions. Each Collaboratory receives $5,000 to pursue a research question central to IA’s goals over the course of a year together, and to leverage external funding for further inquiry. The money may be used to advance their research as the Fellows see fit: to support a face-to-face meeting, to pay a research assistant to carry out a preparatory phase of a project, or to buy time to pursue outside funding.  All applicants become research associates and are kept closely informed of project developments.

IA acts as a consultant to its member campuses, providing input on strategic plans, grant applications, faculty outside reviews, and the like.  We can assist with the development of public humanities centers, summer institutes, and infrastructure for campus-community partnerships, curricula, and regional collaborations.  Other areas of assistance include models for collaborative creativity between campus units and state-level coalitions.  IA systematically circulates to its membership rich information about programs at member campuses and provides conference workshops on them.  

Member institutions are eligible for site visits, in which an IA leader, either from the staff or the national board, visits a campus to meet with faculty, administrators, students, and community leaders and serves as a consultant to them.   Each member institution is eligible for one site visit every eighteen months (two per membership term). 

Conferences and Meetings

IA’s national conference is a crucial event for teams (including faculty, students, administrators, and community partners) from member institutions.  Taking place over three days, the conference features workshops for consortium members that target the skills needed to build a campus culture of engagement across the arts and humanities and to create alliances for public culture work at different kinds of institutions. Member institutions have priority in presenting at sessions, and participants from member institutions enjoy reduced registration fees for the conference as well. 

Throughout the year, Imagining America supports approximately five regional meetings across the country for member institutions to continue building public practice into the cultural disciplines.  These one-to-two day meetings offer members the opportunity to work deeply with Imagining America leadership on a single issue or subject, such as the Tenure Team Initiative, to visit project sites, and to catalyze campus-wide efforts, while also encouraging regional collaboration and networking. 

IA collaborates with allied associations on national and regional meetings that further projects consistent with our mission. Partners to date include Campus Compact, Outreach Scholarship, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the Community Arts Network, and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Research and Policy
IA generates research and policy initiatives that focus on public scholarship and campus-community partnerships. Members have contributed directly to the Tenure Team Initiative (TTI) on Public Scholarship, IA’s major policy effort on tenure and promotion policies for engaged faculty scholars and artists. The TTI, launched in 2005, has produced, online, a survey, a knowledge base on tenure and promotion policy, and a background study with draft recommendations. National co-chairs Steven Lavine of California Institute of the Arts and Nancy Cantor of Syracuse University are both presidents of IA campuses. In May 2008, co-authors Julie Ellison (IA Director Emerita) and Tim Eatman (IA Research Director) completed the final report, Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University. The report is now the basis of regional meetings to enhance efforts to improve tenure and promotion policy around public scholarship.

Our new research initiative, Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship (APPS), will investigate how to anchor excellent public scholarship in higher education curriculum by assessing its impact on student learning, faculty development, and the public good. We will consider engaged curricula and projects at beginning and advanced levels and on a continuum of scales (e.g., the assignment, the course, the project, the program) that integrate a significant arts, humanities, or design component.  Beginning with reports on the current state of courses and degrees in the public arts, humanities, and design, this initiative offers tools for IA members to measure the impact of their work, to develop more equitable ways to structure campus-community partnerships, and to create and improve syllabi and degree programs. The research will contribute to the integration of such experiences in undergraduate education, evaluation of faculty who institute them, and fuller acknowledgement of the role of community partners in our students’ education. APPS findings will serve as the basis for face-to-face and virtual activities -- through dialogue, exchange of materials, and workshops -- to enhance teaching and longer term, knowledge-producing projects linking campus and community.

We have also launched a research project to specify professional pathways emerging from a publicly-engaged education. Through our six-year-old Publicly Active Graduation Education (PAGE) program, we have accumulated a unique data base, containing information about students who wish to be publicly active in their careers. We are not aware of another national organization that has tracked this many students with such aspirations from so many institutions. We are discovering what former PAGE fellows are doing now, how their education did or did not prepare them, and what insight this offers publicly-engaged education. IA members are uniquely positioned to benefit from our discussions about these professional directions and to continue to help shape the research as it develops for maximum usefulness in shaping their own programs and guiding their own students.

Graduate and Undergraduate Education

Through IA's Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) initiative, graduate students and early-career scholars have the opportunity to join a thriving and articulate national cohort. PAGE Fellowships support attendance at the conference, featuring workshops specifically for graduate students, post-docs, and early career scholars. This energetic group promises to help reshape public humanities and arts practices in higher education.

In addition to the Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship initiative, one of the five Collaboratories specifically focuses on the ramifications of public scholarship within the undergraduate context. IA also supports innovation in teaching through resources such as “Specifying the Scholarship of Engagement,” which sets forth the specific skills and literacies that community-based teaching in cultural fields requires. Member institutions share ways to improve and revise their curricula, and members can depend on IA staff and colleagues for help and advice in such endeavors. Membership in IA means participating in cutting-edge conversations about how young scholars and artists are educated and trained to work on public sphere projects with partners such as museums, neighborhood organizations, public schools, historical sites, and local artists and leaders.

Publications  

IA’s semi-annual newsletter has a distribution of several thousand. Through the Director’s Column and guest submissions, the newsletter serves as a platform for new trends in public scholarship. The newsletter also profiles efforts in individual states and regional partnerships. IA additionally publishes Foreseeable Futures, a series of position papers, most of which were originally delivered as keynote addresses by publicly-engaged leaders in higher education at our annual conferences. For example, Professor George Sanchez wrote about“the tangled web of diversity and democracy;” Professor Judy Baca described the challenges of bringing community-based art into the academy, and the artistic practices it inspires; and Professor Scott Peters discussed the relationship between universities and rural communities.  These publications are free for member institutions. We are beginning to explore the creation on an online IA journal through yet another of the Collaboratories.

Consortium Governance
IA initiates annual phone conversations and regular email contact with member representatives to determine where its efforts can be most effective, and what areas of inquiry and support are most relevant to members.  Member representatives participate in the Annual Meeting, held during the national conference, during which they provide suggestions and directions for IA’s programs and future endeavors.

IA is led by an active National Advisory Board, which holds a mid-year retreat in addition to its annual meeting at the conference. Board members reflect the diversity of the Consortium, including community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and research universities. They also reflect the Consortium’s national scope and interdisciplinary character, with the representation of community partners as well.