Sarah Schwarz, director of PCCE, invited attendees to think about how Princeton can “open doors and share our resources more widely."
New Jersey community college educators convene at Princeton to share ideas, build partnerships for the humanities
Humanities professors and administrators from all 18 public community colleges in New Jersey spent a full day on Princeton University’s campus April 11 for a conference focused on increasing the vitality of the humanities in the college classroom and deepening partnerships with Princeton.
The event, the first in a series, was hosted by Princeton’s new Humanities Initiative and the Program for Community College Engagement (PCCE).
Rachael DeLue, director of the Humanities Initiative, told attendees that a “major pillar” of the initiative is to “foster community engagement and public collaborations.” That effort is centered first and foremost on Princeton’s relationship with New Jersey’s community colleges, she said.
“I want to think really hard about what the humanities are on our campuses and also what they could, even should, be in the 21st century, not just for us but to contribute to human flourishing and to the greater good,” DeLue said.
Sarah Schwarz, director of PCCE, invited attendees to think about how Princeton can “open doors and share our resources more widely. I hope we can think together about the challenges facing the humanities while celebrating the humanities in the classroom and revitalizing the role of humanities.”
PCCE was founded in 2023 to build on the University’s long-standing work with community colleges. Its primary goal is to create collaborations and mentorship opportunities for faculty, administrators and students at New Jersey’s community colleges with Princeton faculty and graduate students. PCCE is part of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, a unit of the Office of the Dean of the College.
“The heartbeat of our institutions”
“The humanities students are the heartbeat of our institutions,” said conference co-organizer Linda Scherr, chief academic officer of the New Jersey Council of County Colleges. She noted that more than 20 percent of the 20,000 associate of arts degrees conferred annually at New Jersey community colleges are in the humanities.
“We need to help students see how their humanities courses fit into their journey as an engaged citizen, their career journey, their lifelong learning journey,” Scherr said. Access to cultural and academic resources that Princeton makes available to community college faculty and students is essential, she said.
Throughout the day’s programming, attendees learned about the range of free resources available at Princeton, including Princeton University Library’s Special Collections and the Princeton University Art Museum.
Scherr underscored the importance of helping community college students transfer to four-year institutions through programs like PCCE’s Teaching Transfer Initiative. TTI hires visiting faculty to teach courses and lead transfer workshops at two partner community colleges, and in this way acts as a bridge between community colleges and selective four-year schools. TTI’s sister program, the Transfer Scholars Initiative, is an eight-week summer intensive for community college students, who take two for-credit Princeton courses at no cost to the student and receive mentorship to support their application process to four-year schools.
Carin Berkowitz, executive director of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, praised the educators for their work in demonstrating the value of the humanities to students. “Let’s be a model for the rest of the country,” she said.
In a high-energy keynote conversation with DeLue, the acclaimed ceramics artist Roberto Lugo thanked the community college educators for their commitment to opening doors and expanding horizons for students, including himself.
In a high-energy keynote conversation with Rachael DeLue (right), director of Princeton's Humanities Initiative, acclaimed ceramics artist Roberto Lugo (left) shared the story of how he began his artistic journey at a community college.
Lugo, who grew up in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, threw his first pot in a ceramics studio as a community college student at Seminole State College in Florida, calling it “a transformative experience. … I found the thing that I was supposed to do in my life.” He transferred to Kansas City Art Institute, where he earned his BFA, then earned his MFA from Penn State.
His pottery is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among many others, and his solo exhibition "Orange and Black" is on view at Princeton University Art Museum's Art@Bainbridge through July 6. “I want to thank you for the work that you folks do for community colleges,” he told the audience. “I want you to be able to see, through people like me, that your work is incredibly important.”
STEM collaborations and setting students up “for the unknown”
In lively breakout sessions, participants explored the conference theme “Where are the humanities?” and shared innovative approaches.
Attendees spoke enthusiastically about required ethics courses for non-humanities majors ranging from nursing to criminal justice, about Spanish language coursework for students tracking into police and healthcare professions, and about applying the “rich academic treatment of world mythology” to graphic design and game art studies.
Lauren Schwartz, an adjunct instructor in the humanities and English at Salem Community College, talked about the value of creating “porous boundaries” between humanities and STEM courses.
At Salem’s renowned glass program, “we have a unique instance of science and the humanities working side by side,” she said, with students learning to manufacture calibrated scientific instruments work alongside others crafting flameworked glass sculptures for leading artists like Dale Chihuly. “I hope we can explore that [dynamic] further.”
John Paul Christy, executive director of the Humanities Initiative, invited participants to describe how they envision the future of the humanities on their campuses.
In lively breakout sessions, participants explored the conference theme “Where are the humanities?” Each small group conversation was facilitated by the morning speakers, including Sarah Schwarz (far right), director of Princeton’s Program for Community College Engagement.
One attendee hoped to invite alumni and local professionals as varied as podcasters and lawyers to campus to talk about how they use core strengths of the humanities — research, writing and close reading of texts — daily in their work. Another participant was thinking about devising hands-on workshops at public libraries, high schools and community fairs to show how the humanities “help set you up for the unknown.”
Cole Crittenden, vice provost for academic affairs, has been guiding the development of Princeton’s collaborative programs with community colleges. He described the humanities conference as a model for the kinds of reciprocal learning that PCCE can facilitate. “Bringing together leading humanities scholars from Princeton, world-class artists, committed faculty from two-year public institutions, and nonprofit leaders to learn from one another is something PCCE is perfectly positioned to do,” he said. He noted that community colleges are the one sector of higher education where the number of degrees awarded in the humanities and liberal arts is seeing steady growth, adding that Princeton can learn as well as lead through these engagements.
A “revelation”: Discovering Princeton’s cultural and academic resources
Afternoon site visits took attendees across campus. In the study room in Special Collections, reference and outreach specialist Emma Sarconi had arranged a trove of items from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, housed in Special Collections, on six tables.
“Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the publishing of ‘The Great Gatsby,’” Sarconi said, welcoming the visitors — after the required stop at the sinks to wash their hands.
She introduced Special Collections as she does for Princeton students, emphasizing the breadth of holdings: books, manuscripts, coins, art, photographs, newspapers and more.
“We tell students, here is an opportunity to study someone who’s never been studied," she said. "This is a place where you can do groundbreaking research." She encouraged the community college professors to tell their students about Special Collections, which is free and open to the public without an appointment, and offers support including funding options for travel and one-hour virtual appointments with a reference librarian.
Participants who visited Special Collections perused pages from the earliest drafts of “The Great Gatsby”; correspondence between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Max Perkins, his editor; a special edition of “Gatsby” printed for World War II soldiers (pictured); and more.
Participants perused the diary of Ginevra King, Fitzgerald’s ex-girlfriend, who scholars believe was the inspiration for the character of Daisy Buchanan, along with pages from the earliest drafts of the novel. Sarconi showed them a special edition of “Gatsby” printed for World War II soldiers.
Schwartz of Salem County College carefully turned the pages of a folder of correspondence between Fitzgerald, then staying at the Hotel Capri in Italy, and Max Perkins, his editor in New York, as the final six months of editing “The Great Gatsby” unfolded in real time. Among the handwritten letters and cablegrams, she found one in which Fitzgerald asked if it was too late to change the book’s title (yes, it was).
Later, she said the experience “hit home in the best way, as I think it would to anyone who has tried to sell students on the importance of the writing process and multiple drafts!”
She said it was “a revelation” that Princeton’s Special Collections would be open to her students at Salem — “the smallest community college in the state, in the least-populated county and one of the poorest.”
Other participants visited Princeton’s Digital Learning Lab, where they learned how to use various free tools to create innovative assignments in their humanities classes. At Princeton’s Seed Farm, Tania Boster, director of Princeton’s Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES), discussed the Seed Farm’s various programs such as the Heirloom Gardens Oral History Project. Curator Carolyn Laferrière led a tour of Lugo’s exhibition “Orange and Black."
Connecting 101: “I did not realize how open Princeton is”
During the closing session, Cara McClintock, associate director of PCCE, said the original idea for the site visit to Special Collections came from a conversation, facilitated by PCCE, between Special Collections librarian Emma Sarconi and Bettina Caluori, professor of English and chair of English and World Languages at Mercer County Community College. Caluori wanted a way to illustrate for her students the importance of the writing process, and Sarconi created a hands-on workshop that charted "The Great Gatsby" from inspiration to revision to publication for Caluori's honor students, held at Princeton.
McClintock asked participants for other ideas about how Princeton can offer its academic and cultural resources to help make the humanities a larger part of college life. "We want to be a partner and a welcoming space,” she said.
Attendees spoke up: “I’d love to see networking opportunities with community college students and Princeton students” and “It would be a great experience for our faculty to meet with Princeton faculty to ask, how are you setting up your syllabi, how are you structuring your classes?”
McClintock encouraged attendees to take part in the Community College Faculty Program, which allows professors to audit up to two Princeton classes per semester, and subscribe to PCCE’s newsletter, which promotes opportunities such as public lectures, exhibits, performances and livestreamed lunch sessions at Princeton. For example, economics Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin will give a free public lecture on April 29 in McCosh 50.
“I did not realize how open Princeton was and how inviting it is with its resources to support community colleges,” said Jonathan Molinaro, dean of arts and humanities at Ocean County College. “To have one of the world’s top universities at the center [of a conference for New Jersey community colleges] was a real treat.”
“I left the conference feeling hopeful and more excited,” said Eric Adamson, an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Hudson County Community College. “My ‘Intro to the Novel’ students are finishing ‘Dracula’ this week so I'll be browsing the Princeton archive for materials relating to Dracula and vampires that we can look at as we finish the novel.”
At a morning breakout session Lauren Schwartz (center), an adjunct instructor in the humanities and English at Salem Community College, exchanges ideas with Claire Smuga, professor of animation and game design at Brookdale Community College (left), and Cara McClintock, associate director of Princeton's Program for Community College Engagement.