New ACLS Report Highlights the Strength and Value of Teaching and Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences at American Community Colleges

ACLS today published The Promise of the Humanities at Community Colleges: Reflections from the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship Program. This new report, the first ever native to the Manifold publishing platform for ACLS, highlights perspectives of 12 faculty fellows of the program on the unique ways humanities scholarship is practiced in the sector. The publication was made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

As of Spring 2025, 4.4 million students were enrolled in community colleges in the United States, making it the largest growth area in higher education. Community college faculty operate in a distinct ecosystem that includes heavy teaching loads, highly diverse student populations, deep connections to the local community, and budgetary challenges. ACLS commissioned this collection of essays to share the perspectives of scholars who balance teaching-intensive schedules and find time for bold research projects and transformative pedagogies. The collection also champions humanistic research as a public good at a time when related disciplines are often under-resourced or dismissed as lacking in value.

“Community colleges continue to serve as the backbone of American higher education, serving a wide variety of learners across ethnic, economic, and age groups,” said ACLS Program Officer Nike Nivar Ortiz. “With this report, we hope to showcase the important role of the humanities and social sciences at these vital institutions, and the impact of providing more time and resources for faculty research.”

Representing a wide variety of disciplines and institutional profiles, the essays are organized around four main themes: research landscapes; student engagement and pedagogy; community engagement and public-facing work; and equitable practices. These first-hand perspectives explore system-wide issues and document research and curricular innovation, as well as opportunities for engaging in the research enterprise more broadly.

Between 2019 and 2022, the Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship Program supported 110 community college faculty members from colleges across the United States. This singular program recognized the vital contributions to scholarship, teaching, and local communities made by humanities and social science faculty teaching at two-year institutions.

All contributors to The Promise of the Humanities at Community Colleges are fellows of the program:

Lucha Arévalo F’22, Río Hondo College
Cinder Cooper Barnes F’20, Montgomery College
Beth Baunoch F’20, Community College of Baltimore County
Santiago Andres Garcia F’19, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College
Prithi Kanakamedala F’21, CUNY, Bronx Community College
Megan Klein F’21, Oakton College
Charlotte Lee F’22, Berkeley City College
Sophie Maríñez F’21, CUNY, Borough of Manhattan Community College
William Morgan F’20, Lone Star College
Katherine Rowell F’22, Sinclair Community College
Jaime Thomas F’21, Cypress College
Jewon Woo F’19, Lorain County Community College

The collection was edited by leaders in the community college sector who participated in the review and selection process of the program: Carmen Carrasquillo, Professor of English and Vice President of the Academic Senate, San Diego Miramar College; and Brian Stipelman, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Liberal Arts, Frederick Community College.

Publishing The Promise of the Humanities at Community Colleges on the ACLS Manifold instance enables scholars, administrators, and others to engage directly with this resource using the platform’s annotation tools as they adapt recommendations on their own campuses.