Strengthening the Humanities in Rural Western Massachusetts

FAIN: ZED-283426-22

Greenfield Community College (Greenfield, MA 01301-9755)
Matthew Barlow (Project Director: May 2021 to May 2022)
Keith E Bailey (Project Director: May 2022 to June 2022)
Charles Jordan (Project Director: June 2022 to present)

Development of new humanities courses and classroom spaces to support distance learning.

Greenfield Community College (GCC) is a public, not-for-profit, two-year college accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and located in rural Greenfield, MA, in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. GCC wishes to 1) develop the humanities portion of the GCC General Education requirement; 2) highlight soft skills taught in the humanities that are valued by regional employers; 3) improve upon existing courses and create new courses in medical humanities, including Spanish for health science, science writing, and medical ethics; and 4) upgrade existing old-fashioned humanities classrooms to active learning classrooms (ALCs). All four components of the ARP project would help retain jobs lost during COVID and would bolster student enrollment by helping to define how the humanities can help GCC students achieve their goals of graduation, transfer, and/or entering the workforce.