TTI
Consortium Members
Allegheny College
Arizona State University
Auburn University
Bates College
Bellarmine University
Beloit College
Boston College
Bowling Green State University
Brown University
California Institute of the Arts
Carleton College
Chicago State University
Clark University
Colgate University
College of William and Mary
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Drew University
Duke University
Eastern Connecticut State University
Emerson College
Emory University
Hamilton College
Hampshire College
Indiana State University
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University-Purdue
University Indianapolis
Iowa State University
Kalamazoo College
Lafayette College
Lawrence University
Macalester College
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Miami University
Michigan State University
Missouri State University
Nassau Community College
New York University
Ohio State University
Oklahoma State University
Pennsylvania State University
Portland State University
Purdue University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Richland College
Rutgers University
Southern Oregon University
Stanford University
Stony Brook University-State
University of New York
Syracuse University
Tulane University
University at Albany, SUNY
University at Buffalo, SUNY
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
University of California, Davis
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California,
Santa Barbara
University of Delaware
University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign
University of Iowa
University of Maryland
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Notre Dame
University of Oregon
University of Pennsylvania
University of Puerto Rico, Humacao
University of Southern California
University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at San Antonio
University of Utah
University of Virginia
University of Washington, Bothell
University of Washington, Seattle
University of Washington, Tacoma
Virginia Tech
Wagner College
Wesleyan University
Winona State University
To update member information, please contact us.
Consortium 2008 Membership Benefits
Imagining America depends on a lively consortium to enact its mission and support its purpose. This year, IA consortium members will be invited to participate in two special opportunities: regional workshops on the implementation of tools and templates emerging from over two years research into expanding promotion and tenure guidelines to include public scholarship and practice; and a national Curriculum Project investigating best practices in community-campus cultural development partnerships supported by the Nathan Cummings Foundation. (See details under Research and Policy, below.)
Other benefits 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.
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. Intimacy with IA's work can lead to opportunities for innovation at home institutions.
Member institutions may apply for Critical Exchange Grants, awards of $2,000 intended to support visits of faculty, staff, and students between IA member institutions that help to develop programs, build regional collaborations, or jump-start engaged cultural work on campus.
IA disseminates models of innovative programs, such as public humanities centers, summer institutes, and infrastructure for campus-community partnerships, curricula, and regional collaborations. IA systematically circulates to its membership rich information about programs at member campuses and provides conference workshops on them. "Imagining Your State" is IA’s model for state-level coalition. IA’s “liberal arts/ performing arts” agenda fosters models for the creative campus.
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. Consultation is always available through informal conference calls or requests for IA’s input on grant applications, strategic plans, and the like. We have also initiated regional meetings among member institutions with IA Director Jan Cohen-Cruz’s participation.
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 also publishes Foreseeable Futures, a series of position papers, most of which were originally delivered as keynote addresses by leaders in higher education at our annual conferences. For example, Professor George Sanchez wrote about“the tangled web of diversity and democracy;” Professor Scott Peters discussed the relationship between universities and rural communities; President Nancy Cantor, Syracuse University, addressed “the university as public good.” These publications are free for member institutions.
Graduate and Undergraduate Education
Through IA's Publicly-Active Graduate Education (PAGE) initiative, graduate students have the opportunity to join a thriving and articulate national cohort. PAGE Fellowships support graduate student attendance at the conference, which includes workshops and dinners specifically for graduate students. Priority will be given to students at member institutions. This energetic group promises to help reshape public humanities and arts practices in higher education.
IA also supports innovations in teaching. The on-line resource, “Specifying the Scholarship of Engagement,” 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.
This year we are expanding our Katrina Initiative to include a semester in New Orleans. A cadre of undergraduate and graduate students from IA member institutions may enroll and live at Xavier University in the spring 2008 semester. They will participate in an arts-based civic engagement project called Home New Orleans, a deeply-rooted community/ arts network involving local residents including artists and students of various disciplines, and several universities, neighborhood, and cultural institutions. Grounded in “Building Community through the Arts,” a course taught jointly by Tulane English Professor Amy Koritz, Xavier Art Professor Ron Bechet, and Dillard Art Department Chair John Barnes, student teams will support ongoing community-building projects in four neighborhoods.
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, knowledge-base on tenure and promotion policy, and 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. The leadership team will issue specific templates and tools in 2007-08, which will contribute to efforts at various kinds of campuses to articulate tenure and promotion policy around public scholarship.
This year, IA received funding from Nathan Cummings Foundation for a research project into best practices in Community Cultural Development curriculum. IA members will be in the forefront of this detailed project exploring how colleges and universities prepare students to integrate arts and culture in community-based projects serving the common good.
Conferences and Meetings
IA’s national conference is a crucial event for teams (including faculty, students, administrators, and community partners) from member institutions who may additionally participate in the pre-conference for Consortium Members. It features workshops 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. Other conference activities for members only include the PAGE [Publicly Active Graduate Education] Institute, the PAGE annual meeting, and the annual meetings of the National Advisory Board and Consortium Member representatives.
Throughout the year, Imagining America supports day-long regional meetings for member institutions to continue building public practice into the cultural disciplines. These meetings, in their pilot year, offer members the opportunity to work deeply with Imagining America leadership on a single issue or subject, to visit project sites, 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 Outreach Scholarship, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Campus Compact, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
Consortium Governance
IA makes regular contact with members to determine where its efforts can be most effective, and what areas of inquiry and support are most relevant to members. Member representatives also have priority in presenting at the annual conference, and participants from member institutions enjoy discounted registration fees for the conference as well.
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.