Faculty Lunch Forum with Joy Connolly, President of the ACLS

Joy Connolly, President of the American Council of Learned Societies will join the forum as special guest.  Joy Connolly has previously been a professor of classics and dean of humanities at NYU and provost and interim president at CUNY Graduate Center.  

The topic is “Designing Programs of Study that Appeal to Students”:  

It seems increasingly urgent to design programs of study that appeal to undergraduates—but how do we do so while respecting the pedagogical commitments and disciplinary allegiances of faculty?  Amid declining enrollments, many humanities departments are now developing credentials that emphasize transdisciplinary study, policy applications, pre-professional training, or other new intellectual frameworks and priorities.  In literary studies, for instance, institutions are rolling out programs in global literature, philology, communications, literature and media, narrative and storytelling, and other decolonizing and transdisciplinary structures.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of such innovations?  What are the challenges of developing programs that meet student and family demands while also satisfying faculty expectations?  How do we navigate disciplinary allegiances and faculty anxieties about change as we respond to the demands of the moment?  How can we have these important conversations with a minimum of stress and worry?

Participants are invited to peruse this National Humanities Alliance guide on recruiting students to the humanities as background—but you do not need to read in advance to attend.  As the session overlaps a class schedule break, you are welcome to come late or depart early if needed.  

Joy Connolly is President of the American Council of Learned Societies. She previously served as provost and interim president of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and as professor of classics and dean of humanities at New York University. A scholar of ancient Roman political thought and literature, she is the author of two books, The State of Speech and The Life of Roman Republicanism, and more than seventy articles, book reviews, and essays. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the Independent, the Village Voice, the Times Literary Supplement, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. Her current book project, tentatively entitled “GreeceandRome,” advocates for an transregional, transcultural approach to the study of ancient societies.