Skip to content
Reading time: 2 minutes
Project Team, from left, Robert Franco, Krista Hiser, Francisco Acoba and Tanya Renner.

Kapiʻolani Community College and the Community College National Center for Community Colleges received a $270,000 grant from the New York-based Teagle Foundation. The institutions will lead a national project entitled, Student Learning for Civic Capacity: Stimulating Moral, Ethical and Civic Engagement for Learning that Lasts. Four Kapiʻolani faculty will play national leadership roles—Director of Office for Institutional Effectiveness Robert Franco is the project director, Professor Tanya Renner is the project evaluator, Associate Professor Krista Hiser is the project technology lead, and Assistant Professor Francisco Acoba will lead project learning assessment efforts.

In collaboration with six other community colleges—De Anza in California, Delgado in Louisiana, Kingsborough in New York, Mesa in Arizona, Queensborough in New York and Raritan Valley in New Jersey—the project will develop 70 courses in the humanities and other fields that:

  • build students’ current and future commitment to civic and moral responsibility;
  • develop strategies for students’ continual building of this commitment across curricular and co-curricular programs to degrees and transfer;
  • develop, review and refine a qualitative rubric-based assessment methodology for campus use and national dissemination;
  • develop, review, implement and refine a quantitative pre- and post-test methodology for campus use and national dissemination;
  • create communities of faculty, staff, students and administrators on each of the seven campuses to build program and institutional commitment to civic and moral responsibility;
  • engage in campus, statewide and national dialogues on curricular and pedagogical reform promoting civic and moral responsibility;
  • leverage additional resources from campus, state, federal and foundation sources.

Kapiʻolani faculty will integrate the following “big question” into service-learning and sustainability designated courses—“How do we build our commitment to civic and moral responsibility for diverse, equitable, healthy and sustainable communities?”

A new Service and Sustainability Learning Reflection Journal has been developed to continuously engage students in addressing the “big question” over one and multiple semesters.

Kapiʻolani Community College will provide state, regional and national leadership in preparing students to be engaged citizens and scholars building a healthier and more sustainable Hawaiʻi for the rest of the world.

A Kapiʻolani Community College news release

Back To Top