Cornerstone: Learning for Living

Sponsor: The Teagle Foundation
Internal Deadline: 09/30/2026
Institutional Submission Limit: 1
Sponsor Deadline: 12/01/2026
Program Website

The Office of the Vice President for Research, in partnership with Corporate and Foundation Relations, invites internal concept papers for The Teagle Foundation’s Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative. This program aims to revitalize the role of the humanities in general education by supporting faculty-led curricular reform that creates a common intellectual experience for students, especially incoming undergraduates, through transformative texts and coherent pathways through general education.

The Teagle Foundation is particularly interested in projects that expose a broad range of students to the power of the humanities; help students build a sense of belonging and intellectual community; strengthen the coherence and cohesiveness of general education; and increase meaningful teaching opportunities for humanities faculty.

Program Priorities

Competitive projects should be faculty-led and faculty-owned, with significant participation from tenure-track humanities and liberal arts faculty. Proposals should include a common intellectual experience for incoming students through one or more gateway courses anchored in transformative texts, such as works of literature, philosophy, essays, poems, and other primary works from a range of traditions and time periods.

Projects should also create coherent pathways through general education that help students connect humanistic inquiry to fields such as business, health, engineering, education, public service, and other professional or pre-professional areas. These pathways may take the form of thematic clusters, guided pathways, certificates, revised general education sequences, or other curricular structures.

The Foundation places strong emphasis on projects that can reach a significant share of the undergraduate student body, particularly students in STEM and other pre-professional majors.

Award Types

Planning grants of up to $25,000 over 6–12 months are strongly encouraged and may be used to support faculty planning, curriculum development, professional development, and related activities that lay the groundwork for successful curricular reform.

Implementation grants of up to $300,000 over 24 months support the launch or expansion of curricular models aligned with the Cornerstone: Learning for Living initiative. The size of the award will depend on the scope and scale of the proposed project.

Submission Process

Those interested in pursuing this opportunity should submit the following materials as a single PDF document to USCCFR@sc.edu by September 30th.

• Project Summary and Goals
  A brief overview of the proposed project, including whether the team seeks planning or implementation support and the anticipated request amount.
• Alignment with Cornerstone: Learning for Living
  A description of how the project would establish a common intellectual experience anchored in transformative texts for a significant share of incoming students and how it would create coherent pathways through general education.
• Faculty Leadership and Participation
  Names and departments of the two proposed faculty co-PIs, along with a provisional list of faculty members interested in teaching with transformative texts or participating in the curricular reform effort.
• Curricular Model
  A description of the proposed gateway course, course sequence, certificate, thematic cluster, guided pathway, or general education model. Applicants should describe how the project would serve students across disciplines, including students in STEM or other pre-professional programs.
• Provisional List of Transformative Texts
  A preliminary list of texts the faculty team is considering as the basis for the common intellectual experience.
• Student Reach and Sustainability
  An explanation of the anticipated scale of the project, including the number or type of students expected to participate, how the project aligns with institutional priorities, and how the work could be sustained beyond the grant period.
• Assessment and Dissemination
  A brief description of how the project team would assess student learning, faculty practice, and program effectiveness, as well as how lessons learned would be shared internally and externally.

For questions regarding this opportunity, please contact Jenni Asman (asmanj@mailbox.sc.edu).