The Teagle Foundation: Education for American Civic Life

Overview

_NOTE: At this time, the Foundation is accepting proposals from current planning grantees only.
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Mission

The mission of the Teagle Foundation is “to support and strengthen liberal arts education, which we see as fundamental to meaningful work, effective citizenship, and a fulfilling life.”

Education for American Civic Life

The Education for American Civic Life initiative supports efforts to prepare students to become informed and engaged participants in the civic life of their local and national communities. Grants of varying amounts, ranging from $100,000-$300,000 over a 24-36 month period, will be made to each funded project participating in this initiative. The size of the grant will be based on the scope of the project. We expect this grant program will remain open for approximately three to five years.

Through Education for American Civic Life, the Foundation seeks to elevate the civic objectives of liberal arts education by partnering with institutions offering bold and coherent initiatives that endow students with the content, skills, and sensibility to participate in a political system designed for self- governance. While progress has been made at many institutions of higher education to promote civic action and various forms of community service as part of the undergraduate experience, the Foundation is especially concerned with grounding such action and service in comprehensive civic knowledge through teaching, reading, debate, and discussion centered in the curriculum.

Criteria for Project Proposals

Through this initiative, the Foundation seeks ambitious projects that confront gaps in undergraduates’ civic knowledge and prepare them for the intellectual demands of democratic participation. Successful proposals will seek to promote learning about the formation of the American republic, the crafting of its Constitution, the history of contention over the interpretation of the Constitution, the development of representative political structures, and the principles of democracy. Civic education is strongest when it is not treated as a theoretical or abstract subject but when it becomes part of the lived experience of students and links their work across disciplines. For this reason, the majority of our grants go to institutions that give students an opportunity to connect big questions in areas like governance, history, and law, to the local history and current conditions of the community outside the campus gates.

Regardless of curricular approach, all successful proposals are expected to address the following:

* Invest in Faculty Leadership and Learning
* The Foundation believes in faculty leadership.
* All grants should name the faculty members that will lead the planning and implementation process.
* The Foundation is therefore invested in building learning opportunities for faculty focused on the knowledge and skills they need to give undergraduates a comprehensive civic education.
* Focus on Undergraduate Education
* Successful proposals will seek to promote learning about the formation of the American republic, the crafting of its Constitution, the history of contention over the interpretation of the Constitution, the development of representative political structures, and the principles of democracy.
* Sustainability
* Successful applicants will clearly articulate how proposed programs are aligned with institutional priorities; how they will be enacted, as appropriate, through institutional governance structures; and how they will be sustained beyond the life of the grant.
* Projects are expected to move beyond additions to course catalogs and reflect content integration to support civic learning outcomes.
* Grants from the Teagle Foundation are made in the expectation that once the formal grant period ends, should the piloted efforts be successful, the costs associated with supporting the work will be absorbed by the participating institution(s).
* Assessment
* Proposals must provide clearly articulated goals for undergraduate civic learning and how they will be measured.
* Dissemination
* Active dissemination efforts will be important to spread the knowledge and practices developed by grantees to higher education stakeholders.
* Dissemination might take the form of publicly available instructional materials; action-oriented toolkits or other publications; webinars; websites and blogs; and conference presentations and workshops.

Specific Areas of Interest

The Education for American Civic Life Initiative is focused on funding in two particular areas:

* Anchor Significant Civic Questions of Democracy in Local History
* Projects are anchored by a significant question concerning the past and present challenges of democracy in the community in which the college or university is located.
* These programs explicitly help students grasp the lived experience—past and present—of their neighbors outside the campus gates as a valuable aspect of a civic education that builds on their education in areas like governance, history, literature, and law.
* Strengthen Preparation for Public Service
* The Foundation is committed to giving students the education they need to participate in public service, whether by formal post-college employment in the public sector or as public-minded participants in civic life.
* In addition to valuable curricular interventions, the Foundation supports programs that explicitly offer students a supported pathway to public service.
* Strong initiatives have taken students through rigorous humanities seminars in democratic theory followed by opportunities to solve significant civic challenges and participate in public service internships.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

* The Teagle Foundation welcomes the participation of a diverse array of institutions—community colleges, liberal arts colleges, comprehensive and research universities—in this initiative.
* Requests from both single institutions and multiple institutions partnering together will be considered.