Bringing It

Bringing It #19: Newsletter Release and a Changemaker Opportunity

July 02, 2019

Dear friends,

Many of you are probably spending much deserved time with loved ones over the holiday; so we’ll keep this week’s Bringing It short.

Have a Look at Our Summer Newsletter

Three times a year we publish a newsletter on issues intimately tied to both our mission and the higher education landscape. These newsletters typically include a Feature piece, Campus Highlight, and Director’s column. Recently, we’ve made it our goal to also include a Student Perspective.

Our summer issue addresses work as one of the purposes of higher education. As Caitlin (who serves as Editor of the Newsletter), puts it:

Long-time colleagues of Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP) may know that we have historically had a complicated relationship with education and work; in fact, a fundamental part of our identity in the past few years was an assertion that higher education had “greater purposes” beyond just workplace preparation—purposes like nurturing student well-being; providing experiential, transformative, or relational learning; fostering democratic and civic commitment; and preparing students to lead a meaningful life (which included, but was not limited to, their career). We saw ourselves as a force against the neoliberalization of higher education, wherein the benefit of attending college was only relevant for its contribution to the economy and workforce, and learning was reduced to a means to a capitalistic end.

However, in part due to our more recent emphasis on the connection of our mission to equity and inclusion, we’ve come to realize the importance of acknowledging the complex—and inevitable—existence of work in students’ lives.

Interested in learning more? Please feel free to download and share the newsletter here. Interested in submitting a piece to our next newsletter? Please visit contact [email protected].

Our Part Time Project Coordinator Position is Now Open: Please Apply and Share with Your Communities 

As noted in our last Bringing It, we are launching a new Collaboratory, Partnerships for Listening and Action by Communities and Educators (PLACE) (made possible with the generous support of The Andrew Mellon Foundation). We are hiring a part time (20 hours/week) Project Coordinator to manage the workings of the PLACE Collaboratory and coordinate relationships among the participating institutions and community partnerships. Applications are now open and are due by July 10th. We hope to bring on the successful candidate in early August. For more information on the position and how to apply, please visit here.

We invite you all to read and share our newsletter and Project Coordinator announcement. And we thank you for your good work and support.

Happy 4th of July!

Warmly,

Caitlin, Mercedes, and David