TTI
Consortium Members
Allegheny College
American University
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
Clark University
Colgate University
Columbia College, Chicago
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Drew University
Duke University
Eastern Connecticut State University
Emerson College
Emory University
Grand Rapids Community College
Hamilton College
Hampshire College
Indiana State University
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University-Purdue
University Indianapolis
Iowa State University
Kalamazoo College
Kennesaw State University
Lafayette College
Lawrence University
Macalester College
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Miami University of Ohio
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
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
Vanderbilt University
Virginia Tech
Wagner College
Wesleyan University
Winona State University
To update member information, please contact us.
Imagining America Consortium
2009 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 to share tools and templates emerging from over two years of 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 (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. 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.
Member institutions may apply for Critical Exchange Grants, awards of $2,500 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.
IA acts as a consultant to its member campuses, providing input on strategic plans, grant applications, 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).
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 them. Priority is 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.
Lat year we expanded our Katrina Initiative to include a semester in New Orleans. A cadre of undergraduate students from IA member institutions may enroll and live at Xavier University and participate in a deeply-rooted community/ arts network involving local residents including artists and students of various disciplines, as well as neighborhood and cultural institutions. Grounded in a course taught by Xavier Art Professor Ron Bechet and local colleagues, student teams support community-building projects in several neighborhoods.
We are in the planning phase of a pedagogical initiative for member faculty and community partners who support student civic engagement through the cultural disciplines. The first step is the publication of a research report on the current state of courses offered in the US both through higher education and through cultural organizations on arts and community development. The report contains an overview of what exists now and recommendations for the future. It will be the basis for face-to-face and virtual activities -- through dialogue, exchange of materials, and workshops -- to enhance such teaching.
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. 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 at member campuses.
Last year, IA received funding from Nathan Cummings Foundation to research best practices in Community Cultural Development curriculum. That report has just been completed and will be the basis for another set of convenings and online efforts to support faculty and community partners’ pedagogical practices.
Conferences and Meetings
IA’s national conference is a crucial event for teams (including faculty, students, administrators, and community partners) from member institutions. In addition to two days of concurrent sessions, the conference features a day of 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. Member institutions have priority in presenting in sessions, and participants from member institutions enjoy reduced registration fees for the conference as well.
Throughout the year, Imagining America supports regional meetings for member institutions to continue building public practice into the cultural disciplines. These meetings 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 Director Jan Cohen-Cruz or Research Director Tim Eatman typically facilitates such gatherings.
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 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.