The American Cornerstones Project is a new initiative at SUNY Geneseo funded by the Teagle Foundation. Its purpose is to provide first-year and transfer students with a shared experience reading transformational text in America Democracy, and with high-impact, community-based research in their hometowns exploring American ideals and the gap that can exist between the way things are and the way things ought to be. Students from all majors are welcome to participate.
American Cornerstones consists of three courses, taken in sequence, beginning during your first semester on campus. In AMCS 101, we will examine the foundations of American freedom and unfreedom, and equality and inequality. In AMCS 102, we will discuss issues of community and citizenship, while beginning to conceptualize your research projects and honing your research skills. When you return home for summer vacation, you will be well-prepared for AMCS 201, in which you will complete a research project about your neighborhood, town, or city that explores significant questions in American civic life. The American Association of Colleges and Universities argues that “in this turbulent and dynamic century, our nation’s diverse democracy and interdependent global community require a more informed, engaged, and socially responsible citizenry.” This sort of civic engagement and civic learning, we believe, can occur in a more meaningful manner when our friends and neighbors know who and what and where they are in terms of connection to a certain location in place and time. How did we get here? Why is our community the way it is? What is the source of the challenges we face as members of communities? How can we confront those challenges effectively, and what have we tried before?
The American Cornerstones Project addresses important issues in American life. Half of American employers in a recent survey indicated that they wished they young people they hired had a firmer understanding of American constitutionalism and how the political system works. Historical and civic illiteracy in the United States has reached dangerous levels. Many more Americans, for instance, can identify the five members of the Simpsons family than they can the five freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. More than a third of Americans cannot name the Vice-President of the United States, their Senators, or congressional representative. If you do not know your rights, or the people elected to protect them, then those rights are in danger.
“This is an exciting project,” said American Cornerstones Project Director Michael Oberg, Distinguished Professor of History. If you enroll in the American Cornerstones project, you will work towards answers to pressing questions about freedom, equality, that nature of community life, and the practice of American Democracy. The American Cornerstones Project first perfectly with SUNY Chancellor John King’s recent call to “increase civic education, civil discourse, and civic awareness and participation across SUNY campuses. Chancellor King recently said that “civic engagement and civil discourse are bedrock principles of our nation’s democracy,” and that “we are strongest as a nation when we teach the skills that lead to arguments informed by nuance, disagreements conducted respectfully, and questions that probe not only our opponents’ assumptions, but our own as well.”
“We could not agree more,” said Professor Oberg. If you are interested in learning more about American Cornerstones, you can reach out to Dr. Oberg for more information at oberg@geneseo.edu.