The Five Colleges Public Policy Initiative has received $194,667 from Five Colleges, Inc., for activities that will help bridge liberal arts and professional education across the five campuses. The award is made possible by a generous grant to Five Colleges from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Co-directors for the project are Brenda Bushouse, associate professor of political science and public policy at UMass Amherst, and Molly Mead, director of the Center for Community Engagement and contributing faculty in American Studies at Amherst College.
A central focus of the project will be developing innovative course modules and pedagogies that help bridge undergraduate and professional training for the next generation of social change leaders.
According to Mead, “Students often arrive on our campuses eager to change the world — and many more develop that desire through coursework that improves their understanding of power, social inequality and the ethics of justice. By working across disciplines and across the undergraduate-graduate divide, we hope to strengthen students’ preparation for producing effective, lasting social change.”
Social entrepreneurship — using business models or managerial principles to organize ventures with a social mission — will be a theme that also will help focus the project’s various activities.
“A good number of Five College undergraduates and graduate students go on to lead, or even found, social change organizations or enterprises,” notes Bushouse. “Our goal is to strengthen their preparation for that work through curricular development that marries strong liberal arts foundations with support for creating and implementing sound management, governance, and fiscal policies and strategies.”
In addition to faculty development workshops and support for curricular development, the two-year grant provides funds for visits by outside experts on social entrepreneurship and bridging liberal arts and professional education; a social enterprise “pitch” competition; various forms of collaboration among graduate and undergraduate students and student groups; and a January term course on social entrepreneurship.
The grant award follows closely the minting of an accelerated Master of Public Policy (MPP) program designed for Five College juniors and seniors and administered by the UMass Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA). According to M.V. Lee Badgett, professor of economics and CPPA director, “This grant will also support collaborations that strengthen the MPP program in its infancy, making cooperation among all five institutions —and a genuine bridge between graduate and undergraduate education — possible.”
Additional information about the project will soon be available at the FCPPI website.