8 Working with Students
The TLH program incorporated students into its transformative work in several ways. In the first year of the grant, we asked the faculty organizing professional development workshops in our Spring 2021 faculty-led workshop series to collaborate with students on the workshops. Those students who applied and participated received modest financial aid scholarships from TLH. TLH faculty fellows in the 2021-2022 and 2022–2023 seminars likewise were asked to do the same and their students were awarded scholarships.
Students Taking Courses with Faculty Fellows
We gave faculty fellows some suggestions for how to kick off the semester using TLH methods (e.g., a collaborative manifesto activity or inventory activities like the ones we did in our Summer Institute). We sent the fellows an email before the start of classes with a sample paragraph they could put at the top of their syllabi to introduce TLH to their students. Click “Download” below to read the full letter, or feel free to reuse and recycle this paragraph welcoming students to your TLH-inspired program:
Welcome! This class with Prof. [Name] is part of an exciting initiative at CUNY called “Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH).” TLH focuses on equitable, creative, student-centered teaching. That means that this class is built with you—students—at the center. You are now a “Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities Student Scholar,” simply for showing up to this special class. This title is something you can put on your CV/resume either now, or down the road, to show future employers that you participated in this exciting program by taking this class. Thank you for being you and for being here.
Students taking courses with faculty fellows directly benefitted from TLH methods, and we surveyed them at the beginning and end of their coursework to assess the immediate impact of TLH methods.
Student Advisory Board
In its last year, TLH formed a Fall 2022 Student Advisory Board of 12 members as well as a Spring 2023 Student Advisory Board of 12 members. To be eligible, students must have been Mellon Student Scholars in a previous semester (Fall 2021, Spring 2022, or Fall 2022), and must have been currently enrolled, matriculated students at CUNY.
The board provided an opportunity to give back to the CUNY community by contributing student voices and leadership as TLH worked to forward transformation at CUNY and in higher education more broadly. As a member of the Student Advisory Board, students met three times (virtually via Zoom) with eleven other fellow CUNY students and advised TLH staff on implementing institutional change related to teaching and pedagogy. In these brainstorming workshops, they worked together to craft goals, discuss the work of writers in TLH’s Transformative Speaker Series, and planned the “Student Summit on the Role of Humanities in a Just Society,” a full-day virtual conference held on May 5, 2023. For their contributions, each student received books, a new laptop, and a $300 TLH scholarship.
Selecting the Student Advisory Board
The application form to become a TLH Student Advisory Board member asked for basic contact information, campus, and major (so we could select students from across campuses and disciplines), and one short-answer question: “Why are you interested in being on the Student Advisory Board?” We included instructions: a 300-word limit and a brief note of advice: “In the past, successful applications have included thoughtful responses to this question and were close to 300 words in length.” We noticed that this note of advice significantly improved and strengthened student responses compared to the prior application round.