SUNY Cortland's Cornerstone Initiative
Moving Forward with Teagle Foundation Support
SUNY Cortland has been awarded a two-year, $225,000 Implementation Grant — Books and Big Ideas: SUNY Cortland Cornerstone Initiative designed to infuse a common humanities experience into students’ curriculum to enrich their learning and demonstrate the applicability and relevance of the humanities in the modern world.
This grant builds upon a one-year, $25,000 planning grant awarded to the university last year.
During the planning period, the Teagle Cornerstone Champions worked with stakeholders across campus to develop three new curricular structures:
- A list of 100 Transformative Texts curated to anchor shared intellectual inquiry
- HUM 100: Books and Big Ideas a Gateway Humanities General Education course
- Course Pathways connecting the Gateway course and Transformative Texts to create new General Education pathways focused on Being New York and Imagining Futures.
Together, these three structures deliver a robust common intellectual experience that cultivates community and gives students new opportunities to craft their own unique General Education journey.
What's Next: The Implementation Grant
The second stage is a two-year, $225,000 Implementation Grant — Books and Big Ideas: SUNY Cortland Cornerstone Initiative. Over the next two years, the Teagle Cornerstone Champions team will work to enhance the shared intellectual experience of first-year students by continuing to grow participation across the campus community.
Look for upcoming Teagle events including Common Reads, Book Clubs, Teaching Panels, Film Screenings, Seminars, and Workshops. These events will:
- Inform our community about this exciting initiative
- Recruit new Gateway Course instructors
- Make our list of Transformative Texts a living part of the curriculum
- Forge Pathways themed by questions central to the human experience — Imagining Futures and Being New York
Transformative Texts
Our Cornerstone Initiative's shared intellectual experience begins with common readings drawn from our list of Transformative Texts. These works are chosen not only for their potential to transform how we view the world individually, but also for the transformative social impacts they have had historically.
SUNY Cortland's Transformative Text List was developed by our Cornerstone Champions with input from humanities faculty and responses to a campus-wide solicitations disseminated by both the Cornerstone Champions and the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee (CICC).
An Interdisciplinary and Diverse Collection
Our Transformative Texts span disciplines and forms — fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, and much more. To make the list more accessible to the entire campus community, we are working with our Library to develop a LibGuide. Stay tuned for that launch!
Connecting Transformative Texts to Campus Life
Transformative Texts are also integrated into the annual selection of CICC common reads. This year's CICC theme — Fire — is reflected in three complementary selections:
- Fictional Common Read: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury — a Transformative Text
- Non-Fiction Selection: By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land by Rebecca Nagle (2024)
- Poetry Selection: Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire by Brenda Hillman (2013)
By anchoring each year's campus common reads with at least one Transformative Text, we aim to foster greater dialogue, familiarity, and participation in both the Cornerstone Initiative and CICC.
The Gateway Course: HUM 100 - Books and Big Ideas
The second pillar of our shared intellectual experience is the Gateway Course. During the planning grant period, we created HUM 100: Books and Big Ideas (3 cr.), designed to give students a meaningful entry point into the humanities at the start of their college careers.
Starting with Transformative Texts
HUM 100 begins with Transformative Texts. Students discuss these works in relation to their original contexts and consider why such texts remain relevant and important in the twenty-first century. The course asks students to think deeply and creatively about why we read, why books matter, and what our social responsibilities are as readers and writers — and how knowledge from the humanities can be applied across different fields and majors. Selections this semester include:
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Humanistic Inquiry
As students read and analyze these books together, a set of guiding questions drives class discussion:
- How can storytelling help us understand the world, and why does it matter to engage with narratives across different time periods, cultural contexts, and fields of knowledge?
- What historical forces have shaped the culture we see around us today?
- How should we navigate our current moment and participate thoughtfully in contemporary society?
- What futures do these narratives ask us to imagine and create?
HUM 100 sections are small and discussion-based, prioritizing student voices. Assignments encourage students to connect readings to real-world issues that matter to them.
The Theme: Imagining Futures
The unifying theme of HUM 100 is Imagining Futures — explored on both a social and personal level. Drawing on texts that present famous literary visions of the future, the course asks students to consider what futures they want to see for social justice, technology, governance, and the environment. What can we gain by examining how historical authors imagined their futures? Which of their predictions have already come true? How might their forecasts help us analyze our present moment — and the futures we ourselves might experience and shape?
Beyond these broad questions, HUM 100 also invites students to consider how these conversations might guide their own individual futures and career paths, deepening awareness of topics they find meaningful. The course also explores the practice of reading itself, emphasizing how the sustained attention required to engage with a book develops the habits of mind essential for success in academia and beyond.
Growing the Gateway
As we move through the implementation grant, we aim to expand the number of course sections and faculty teaching HUM 100. Our goal is for as many first-year students as possible to begin their intellectual journey at SUNY Cortland in this course — with shared readings and conversations animated by a diverse group of full-time faculty.
What a year to be reading Fahrenheit 451!
Pathways: Imagining Futures and Being New York
The third dimension of our shared intellectual experience is the Pathway course. During the two-year implementation period, the Cornerstone Champions are developing a PATH attribute to help students identify these courses across General Education categories, illuminating new Pathways to completing one’s general education requirement.
What Makes a Pathway Course?
The defining characteristics of a PATH course are also taking shape during the implementation period. These courses will offer students the opportunity to continue engaging with Transformative Texts, questions central to human experience, imagined futures, and practical workforce issues facing New York State.
Pathway Pilots
This spring, the first PATH pilot is ECO 393: Urban Economies. In this course, students will read from four Transformative Texts:
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith
- I, Governor of California And How I Ended Poverty: A true story of the future by Upton Sinclair
- And We Are Not Saved by Derrick Bell
- Capital, Vol. I by Karl Marx
Together these works explore humanistic themes of poverty, free speech, voting rights, and the meaning and value of labor. These readings complement practical course inquiries into the consequences of economic spaces such as Congressional voting maps, property taxes and public-school finance, and the rural-urban divide — all examined through a Geographic Information System lens focused on New York State. The combination of Big Ideas and hands on data analysis is designed to open career pathways in municipal governance, nongovernmental organizations, or commercial enterprise.
Additional PATH pilots will be offered in History, Foundations and Social Advocacy, and Recreation, Parks, and Leisure Studies, reflecting Cortland Cornerstone’s commitment to recruiting participants from across each of our schools. How do we help students build the future they want here in New York State? One aspiration is for these PATH courses to evolve over time into formalized sequences leading to certifications and other credentials that open new and exciting career paths for our students. Please join us in shaping intellectual pathways across New York State!
Coming Soon: Raquette Lake Workshop
Summer 2027, we will host a Pathway and Gateway workshop at the William H. Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education at Raquette Lake. More details to come!
Cornerstone Champions
Co-PIs
- Dr. Anisha Saxena, History Department
- Dr. Andrea R. Harbin, English Department
Pathway Coordinator
- Dr. Benjamin Wilson, Economics Department
Faculty Development Team
- Dr. Abigail Droge, English Department
- Dr. Daniel Radus, English Department
- Dr. Willnide Lindor, English Department
- Dr. Jeremy Jiménez, Foundations and Social Advocacy Department, School of Education
- Dr. Amy Direnzo, Recreation, Parks and Leisure Studies Department, School of Professional Studies
- William Gore, Student Success Librarian
Program Assessment Coordinator
- TBD
Graduate Assistant
- Marissa Stone
Get Involved
Please contact any of our Cornerstone Champions with any questions about how to get involved! Additionally, we will be hosting a variety of Teagle events throughout the grant period. These events will feature “How I Teach the Text” panels, discussions of our common reads, and so much more! All events will be listed on the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee’s page.
Resources
For more information about this exciting program, we invite you to check out the programs created at other schools: Purdue, Onondaga Community College, and Vanderbilt as well as the Teagle Foundation’s Learning for Living page. This is truly inspirational work and an incredible opportunity to write a new narrative about the value and meaning of Higher Education.