Bold Ideas Proposals in Development
Current Proposals
This page contains information on Bold Ideas that are being developed. Please use the following form to add information about the proposal your group is developing.
Proposal Description
STONEHILL @ FULLER CRAFT
To develop a long-term partnership between Stonehill and Fuller Craft Museum that formalizes and synchronizes specific strategic priorities in the areas of art, education, community outreach and arts administration.
The mission of ‘Stonehill at Fuller Craft’ is to support the curricular goals of Stonehill College by embedding specific programs into the operations of the museum and the community at large. Fuller Craft Museum would continue its work to bring exciting programming to the region, but now do so with the financial and personnel resources of Stonehill College at their side.
Contact Person: Adam Lampton
Contact Email: alampton@stonehill.edu
TRANSFORMING ENGAGEMENT THROUGH DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION
This proposal expands the unique IDEAS (Integrating Democratic Education at Stonehill) program to both semesters, doubling the number of innovative, multi-disciplinary courses and the number of students who can teach and enroll in them each year. But this is more than just a program expansion: the aim is building an academic culture in which students demand more of themselves and their peers. IDEAS will add a focus on first-year students to engage them from day one in a culture where students model intellectual leadership and enthusiasm.
Course evaluations and graduate outcomes capture IDEAS’s transformative effects. Former facilitators report the leadership skills and academic depth they gained have fostered their interests and success in graduate school, professional careers, and service; students report IDEAS courses helped them become better contributors, collaborators, and intellectual risk-takers. “Bold IDEAS” thus advances Stonehill’s larger vision, benefiting students from their first semester to long after graduation.
Contact Person: Sarah Gracombe
Contact Email: sgracombe@stonehill.edu
RESEARCH-BASED ADVISING, MENTORING, AND PLANNING (RAMP)
Research-based Advising, Mentoring, and Planning (RAMP) will be a FYE for science majors guided by a science faculty member and upper-level science students. RAMP will meet once a week and, in addition to covering key parts of the current FYE curriculum, RAMP groups will undertake research projects that will foster an early interest and excitement about science in an empowering environment that will nurture mentoring relationships.
Research projects will be group projects modeled after the HHMI Phage-Hunter project and the University of Maryland’s FIRE program. To minimize demands on the students’ time, all research will be done during scheduled class. An end-of-the-semester poster session will allow different sections of the RAMP program to present their results.
Contact Person: Louis Liotta
Contact Email: lliotta@stonehill.edu
CSPSC: CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PORTUGUESE SPEAKING COMMUNITIES
This project proposes hiring a faculty member whose main responsibilities will be to develop and manage a Center for the Study of Portuguese Speaking (Lusophone) Communities (CSPSC) and teach. The Director will be responsible for fundraising and engaging in community outreach, especially to Cape Verdian, Portuguese, and Brazilian communities heavily concentrated near Stonehill and from which many Stonehill students come. The Director will organize an annual event that is intended to bring regional, national and international awareness to Stonehill’s commitment to Portuguese speaking communities. The Director will teach four undergraduate courses per year in English, including a First Year Seminar on the “Portuguese Speaking Immigrant experience in the United States,” and additional courses on culture, literature, history, politics... These courses would help Stonehill attract and retain students as well as contribute to programs such as the Cornerstone Program of General Education, Interdisciplinary Studies, Latin American Studies, and Community Based Learning.
Contact Person: Kirk Buckman
Contact Email: kbuckman@stonehill.edu
CSRE: CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY
The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity will be a home for innovative teaching, research, and public dialogue, supported by an interdisciplinary cluster hire of four tenure-track faculty members with expertise in a U.S. and transnational context. We offer this proposal in response to concrete goals that the college has set for itself, including diversifying the faculty, infusing the study of race and ethnicity into the general education curriculum, recruiting and retaining more students of color, improving campus climate for all students, creating opportunities for interdisciplinary work, and increasing the number of high-impact academic experiences. The CSRE would contribute to a transformative culture change as we strive to raise our academic profile, to prepare students for diverse and global workplaces, and to live up to our mission to be an institution that “thinks, acts, and leads with courage toward the creation of a more just and compassionate world.”
Contact Person: Laura Scales
Contact Email: lscales@stonehill.edu