The podcast, which examines the challenges facing higher education, is part of the larger Way Forward project.
Bringing Theory to Practice, a national project headquartered at Elon, has launched a new podcast called “The Way Forward: Higher Education In a Time of Crisis” that complements the work the initiative is undertaking through its Way Forward project.
The Way Forward offers grants to multi-campus partnerships for innovative projects that respond to the current crises facing higher education. Funding from The Endeavor Foundation, which supports BT2P’s work across numerous programs, helped to launch this multi-year initiative in 2020, and earlier this year, the initiative received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation as well.
Both the Way Forward project and the new podcast aim to catalyze positive educational responses to the current crisis facing American society and American higher education. 2020 confronted higher ed with a pandemic, economic catastrophe, and threats to institutional survival. It shone a light on long-festering harms of racism and inequality—as well as on the resilience of our institutions and our larger communities. The crisis made it clear that higher ed is in turmoil. But it has also opened possibilities of creative change that weren’t so thinkable in the before times. The Way Forward is BT2P’s effort to illuminate and support those positive pathways.
This first season of our podcast features some of the most visionary and thoughtful voices in higher education. The first episode of the season features a conversation with President Freeman Hrabowski of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Coming episodes include innovative leaders like Chancellor Nancy Cantor of Rutgers University-Newark, creative institution-builders like Adam Bush of College Unbound, and radical public scholars like Michelle Fine of the Graduate Center, CUNY. Each episode will take on the immediate crisis, the long-term problems it has amplified, the possible, positive futures it has opened up, and current work that can point the way forward.
The podcast is available on the Apple Store, Spotify, Stitcher, and Audible.