Applied humanities may be the key to reversing declining enrollment trends in higher education humanities programs (Epstein, 2017; Marcus, 2025). The applied humanities situate enduring “great questions” within practical, interdisciplinary contexts, providing students with a framework to connect timeless ideas with modern challenges, promoting broad perspectives across majors, and strengthening enrollment and visibility (Atkinson, 2021). Applied humanities programs have resulted in increased humanities enrollments at some universities in the United States, with a number of institutions actively marketing that a humanities education leads to jobs (Marcus, 2025).

Community colleges can center professional learning opportunities for faculty to enable them to continue to learn about student engagement, student success, and teaching and pedagogy (Jaeger et al., 2024). Faculty-led training opportunities to share promising practices with peers and critically analyze ideas can address the natural tendency of faculty to teach in their preferred style rather than using more effective teaching techniques (Jaeger et al., 2024). According to the literature, faculty who complete semester-long professional development programs have increased rates of student course completion and retention (McShannon et al. 2006; Perez et al., 2012, in Jaeger, 2024, p. 508). Similarly, Alsaden and Bell (2024) emphasize that intentional faculty development, paired with opportunities to build teaching experience, is critical for fostering inclusive classrooms where faculty availability and supportive engagement with students enhance student learning, belonging, and persistence.

Inclusive classroom practices in the humanities can address students’ negative predispositions and limited expectations from prior educational experiences, which may cause stress or lack of interest (Jaeger et al., 2024). Cho et al. (2023) highlight the opportunity for faculty to reframe the value of humanities study, nurture students’ abilities as creative thinkers, and design courses that connect with diverse academic and career interests.

The Center for Liberal Arts Work

The Center for Liberal Arts Work (CLAW) at Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) was launched in academic year 2024-2025 through the support of a Cornerstone: Living for Learning grant from the Teagle Foundation to address the need for interdisciplinary, applied humanities-based learning for students. The CLAW has three primary components:

1. A faculty-led year-long professional learning program emphasizing hands-on learning in seminar-style instruction, a big question, transformative texts, and community engagement;
2. A general education capstone course and a Letter of Recognition (LOR) in applied humanities; and
3. Faculty-led community engagement opportunities with students, including the signature end-of-year Read, Engage, Act Conference in the Humanities (REACH).

The CLAW’s Faculty Professional Learning Program

Faculty who plan to offer CLAW-based general education classes at AACC must complete a two-semester professional learning program grounded in seminar pedagogy and transformative texts. This program is led by two faculty members who completed similar programming provided to AACC through the Bridge to the Liberal Arts through Primary Source Texts program with St. John’s College and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The CLAW faculty professional learning seminars support community-based learning experiences for an interdisciplinary cohort of 15 faculty members each year for three years. The two-hour seminars, held twice monthly, require common reads, high-impact practices, and discussion-based and seminar-style learning, and have built-in opportunities for practice, reflection, and revision. Participants are required to revise a general education syllabus, create a learning outcomes assessment project, write a conference proposal, maintain a pedagogy journal, and attend student events. In the sessions, the assumption that seminar-style instruction automatically makes all students feel welcomed is challenged; instead, we require that faculty rethink their classroom pedagogy and practice. Faculty who successfully complete this experience will list their general education classes as part of the seminar-tagged courses available for students pursuing the applied humanities LOR. Faculty who successfully complete the two-semester professional learning program have the opportunity to serve as discussion and pedagogical leaders in the following years, allowing the program to expand and keeping faculty engaged in dialogue and curriculum generation.

Applied Humanities Curriculum

In academic year 2024-2025, through AACC’s formal curriculum development process, we received approval for two new offerings in the applied humanities:

1. The Applied Humanities Capstone, a three-credit humanities general education course, and
2. The LOR in applied humanities, consisting of nine credits of seminar-based general education courses plus the Applied Humanities Capstone course.

The capstone course focuses on the CLAW’s annual big question, with supporting reading from a transformative text list and writing opportunities that allow students to revisit projects completed throughout their seminar courses. The big question, which is different each year, is an open-ended question that addresses meaningful issues in society, does not have a simple answer, and is relevant across all general education disciplines. The LOR is a stackable, coherent pathway through general education courses, which culminates in students creating a portfolio of work centered on transformative texts and the big question. This credential provides a boost for students who intend to transfer to a four-year institution as well as a sense of completion and community.

Community Engagement: REACH

The CLAW begins and ends each academic year with REACH, a forum for students and faculty to share their work, findings, and inquiry from the prior academic year and, uniquely, allows faculty and students to collaboratively generate a focus for a future big question. During REACH, both faculty and students are invested in inquiry as a continuous, recursive process, and work together to create continuity in CLAW programming.

The inaugural REACH convening was held in June 2025 as the CLAW’s culminating, annual signature event. Students, faculty, staff, and administrators led seminars, hands-on sessions, and poster sessions focused on community building and the big question. According to REACH participant surveys, faculty left the event with a desire for more seminar sessions as well as more professional development that included students, and students left the event feeling like they had been part of a community of practice with college faculty, staff, and administration. REACH attendees included students, faculty, staff, assistant deans, deans, academic advisors, associate vice-presidents, community members, members of the board of trustees, the provost, the college president, and AACC alumni.

The Student Experience

For students, the CLAW offers a coherent pathway in applied humanities through general education requirements for graduation. This pathway begins with two college-level composition courses and, as of fall 2025, continues with options of 15 different seminar-based courses representing all general education disciplines at AACC.

We have also witnessed a culture shift in expectations that students have of faculty and the expectations that faculty have of their students. Based on 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 English faculty participation rates in the CLAW, the Dean of Liberal Arts projects that 65 percent of full-time faculty in English will teach required composition courses by fall 2026, resulting in students’ introduction to the college via seminar courses centered around common reads and transformative texts. Student surveys in seminar classes in academic year 2024-2025 indicated that active discussion and debate led by students is the type of learning experience they would prefer in all their classes. As one seminar student noted, student-led activities are an “underused methodology . . . especially [in classes] not rooted in the humanities umbrella.” Another student requested that AACC “make every class like this please,” while others emphasized, “This is the best format for me to learn.”

The CLAW experience has resulted in informal student discussion groups around transformative texts outside the classroom. Plant science students read and discussed Robin Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass on their own time after encountering excerpts from the text in their communications, English, and psychology courses. Fifteen CLAW students enrolled in seminar-based English courses compiled their own list of transformative texts, started a transformative texts book club, and met and discussed Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad. Additionally, CLAW events throughout the semester framed the big question in relation to events on campus, whether they were art exhibitions of ekphrastic conversation between poetry and pottery or the Theater department’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. At the end of our first year, activities were student-conceived, student-organized, and student-executed, highlighting the impact of the CLAW in encouraging and inspiring student agency in their own educations and making them active citizens who continue their education beyond formal schooling.

Opportunities and Outcomes

In the first year of implementation, the CLAW navigated many challenges, some of which are ongoing. Communication about the value of the center with students and internal stakeholders, technology restrictions, student tracking, seminar-style classrooms, and engaging faculty outside of humanities disciplines are issues that we will continue to address. Ensuring collaborative conversations with non-humanities faculty to find the best approaches to integrate seminars into content-heavy curricula will be a priority. Planning for future faculty leadership and funding beyond the grant period will also begin.

As the CLAW entered year two, the second cohort of 15 faculty from 10 departments[1] began the professional development series in August 2025, adding to the 15 faculty from 2024-2025 who represented nine departments.[2] Preliminary analyses from AACC’s Office of Planning Research and Institutional Assessment show promising results from the first year of seminar classes: 91 percent of CLAW students were retained fall 2024 to spring 2025, compared with AACC’s overall fall-to-spring retention of 67.9 percent. In fall 2025, 780 students are enrolled in seminar classes across 16 different courses compared with 512 enrollments in seven courses in fall 2024. We are hopeful that our efforts will continue to lead to increased student success and faculty engagement in the humanities and be part of a resurgence of humanities-based education.

References

Alsaden, P., & Bell, K. (2024). A mixed-methods study of community colleges' best practices for developing inclusive classrooms. The Community College Enterprise, 30(2), 98-12.

Atkinson, D. W. (2021). The humanities: it is their time. On the Horizon, 29(4), 145-159.

Cho, S., Bickerstaff, S., Sparks, D., & Schanker, J. (2023). A foundation and a fire: Strengthening humanities education in community colleges. Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Epstein, M. (2017). Inventive thinking in the humanities. Common Knowledge, 23(1), 1-18.

Jaeger, A. J., Maldonado, L. G., Burleson, S., & Wolfe, C. (2024). Applying what we know about student success to creating a model for faculty success. Community College Review, 52(4), 501-524.

Marcus, J. (2025, Feb 11). Colleges rebrand humanities majors as job-friendly. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/saving-the-field-and-the-world-how-humanities-programs-are-trying-to-rebound
Alicia Morse, Ph.D., is Dean, Liberal Arts; Candice Mayhill, Ph.D., is Professor, English, and Co-Lead, Center for Liberal Arts Work; and Timothy Mayhill is Assistant Professor, English, and Co-Lead, Center for Liberal Arts Work, at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland.

Opinions expressed in Member Spotlight are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the League for Innovation in the Community College.