Wesleyan College is pleased to announce that the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) has awarded a Continuing Collaboration grant to expand a partnership between Wesleyan College and Claflin University, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) located in South Carolina. The two institutions are joining together to share online classes in the humanities as a way of providing students with more educational opportunities. Through the new grant, Wesleyan will be creating four new online humanities courses, while Claflin will be updating four of their current online humanities courses and creating five new ones.
“Wesleyan has a strong online program for our adult students studying business and accounting, and our new online humanities courses will provide our traditional students more online options,” said Wesleyan Provost Dr. Melody Blake.
Both Wesleyan and Clafin participated in a previous grant funded by the CIC to develop online classes. Through that grant the two institutions developed new classes and students could take classes at either institution.
“This grant will build on that previous experience. Wesleyan students can enjoy the benefits of taking a class at an HBCU and Claflin students can experience learning at a women’s college,” said Provost Blake.
CIC President Richard Ekman said, “Online teaching and learning has tremendous potential to sustain the humanities at smaller liberal arts colleges. By sharing courses that might be under-enrolled at a single institution, humanities programs can maximize the use of their instructional resources and offer their students a wider range of high quality courses.”
The Council of Independent Colleges is an association of 765 nonprofit independent colleges and universities and higher education affiliates and organizations that has worked since 1956 to support college and university leadership, advance institutional excellence, and enhance public understanding of private higher education’s contributions to society. CIC is the major national organization that focuses on providing services to leaders of independent colleges and universities as well as conferences, seminars, and other programs that help institutions to improve educational quality, administrative and financial performance, and institutional visibility. CIC conducts the largest annual conferences of college and university presidents and of chief academic officers. CIC also provides support to state fundraising associations that organize programs and generate contributions for private colleges and universities. The Council is headquartered at One Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. For more information, visit www.cic.edu.