Ella Baker would always ask, 'Who are your people? Who claims you and who do you claim?' At College Unbound, we claim one another. Learning is always collective and building a higher education institution around that value helps us all imagine a world that can better embody that practice.
- Adam Bush
Activation Plan
Below is an overview of some campus activities:
College Unbound is a college built around the civic learning of daily life and a belief that higher education can be a transformation engine to drive a reinvestment in the public sphere. Some of the ways we do this are:
- A curriculum that is student driven and evolves with the urgency of the moment. Classes include topics such as reparations, the history of public housing, public advocacy, and research for justice.
- A cohort model that is place and affinity based. For example, around the country we have 6 cohorts of employees of public housing authorities who meet regularly together to think about a commitment to housing as a human right. We have 15 cohorts of teacher assistants and paraprofessionals who are both changing the face of next generation leadership of public education and working in tandem with cohorts of parents of children enrolled in those same schools.
- A collaborative leadership model working to challenge traditional hierarchies of institutional stewardship and decision making.
- Reinvesting in our learners: 1/3 of our staff and 1/3 of our faculty are alumni from the college!
- A cohort of alumni from Death Row in Illinois all meeting weekly as a part of a cohort advancing towards their degrees and to further an abolitionist policy agenda in Chicago.
Planned Future Initiatives:
- A program for public libraries nationwide will first support library staff toward a BA degree and, as a part of that, support the staff in transforming their libraries into sites of BA attainment for library participants.
- An emerging Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Center that is student led.
Adam Bush
President, College Unbound
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Join the growing consoritum of campus leaders urgently committed to collectively restoring higher education’s role in democracy.
Adam Bush
President, College Unbound
Below is an overview of some campus activities:
College Unbound is a college built around the civic learning of daily life and a belief that higher education can be a transformation engine to drive a reinvestment in the public sphere. Some of the ways we do this are:
- A curriculum that is student driven and evolves with the urgency of the moment. Classes include topics such as reparations, the history of public housing, public advocacy, and research for justice.
- A cohort model that is place and affinity based. For example, around the country we have 6 cohorts of employees of public housing authorities who meet regularly together to think about a commitment to housing as a human right. We have 15 cohorts of teacher assistants and paraprofessionals who are both changing the face of next generation leadership of public education and working in tandem with cohorts of parents of children enrolled in those same schools.
- A collaborative leadership model working to challenge traditional hierarchies of institutional stewardship and decision making.
- Reinvesting in our learners: 1/3 of our staff and 1/3 of our faculty are alumni from the college!
- A cohort of alumni from Death Row in Illinois all meeting weekly as a part of a cohort advancing towards their degrees and to further an abolitionist policy agenda in Chicago.
Planned Future Initiatives:
- A program for public libraries nationwide will first support library staff toward a BA degree and, as a part of that, support the staff in transforming their libraries into sites of BA attainment for library participants.
- An emerging Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Center that is student led.
Ella Baker would always ask, 'Who are your people? Who claims you and who do you claim?' At College Unbound, we claim one another. Learning is always collective and building a higher education institution around that value helps us all imagine a world that can better embody that practice.
- Adam Bush