One of the Futures Initiative’s key program areas are a unique set of interdisciplinary, inter-institutional team-taught courses. Following a competitive, CUNY-wide application process, five to seven courses are selected annually for support from the Futures Initiative, with faculty teaching these courses designated as Faculty Fellows. These courses are designed to exemplify equity and innovation, and promote the Futures Initiative’s goals of increasing faculty diversity and establishing robust peer mentoring among faculty members across the CUNY system. Spanning many content areas, the courses emphasize creative, student-centered pedagogy and interdisciplinarity in their methods.
The courses create collaborations across the CUNY campuses and work towards a larger goal of public engagement. In addition to connecting faculty members from multiple CUNY colleges, by focusing on graduate pedagogy as well as ways doctoral students can apply student-centered methods in their own classrooms, they create renewed possibilities for graduate students to consider their dual role as learners and as instructors and valued junior colleagues. To solidify this connection, undergraduates who are taking courses taught by graduate students in Futures Initiative courses are invited to apply to become Undergraduate Leadership Fellows in a competition each spring.
Futures Initiative courses are structured to support the connections between the three pillars of higher education: research, teaching, and service to society. The courses complement and contribute to our public programming through conferences, symposia, and the ongoing University Worth Fighting For series.
Each year’s proposal process begins in early fall; the next call for proposals will open in September 2019.
For more details, visit the pages from prior years’ courses: