The October Periclean
Sharing updates and stories from our network of civic champions, delivered on the first Friday of each month.
Special Announcement: Introducing Shaping Civic Futures, Our Strategic Plan
Two years before founding Project Pericles, Eugene Lang wrote a seminal article in Daedalus that the “liberal arts education must periodically refresh the substance of its mission.” In this spirit, our team and extended community spent this summer reflecting on programming, relationships, and impact through an intensive strategic planning process. Over the past few months, we convened over a dozen live and asynchronous feedback sessions with 45+ stakeholders, including Board Members, Program Directors, faculty, funders, and partners across civic engagement and higher education sector.
Together, this collective effort culminated in the development of our new Strategic Plan. Today, we are proud to share it with you. Along with a refreshed mission, vision, and theory of change, this plan is both a response to the urgent demands of this moment and a blueprint for the future. Over the coming years, Project Pericles will address the pressing challenges facing higher education and democracy through three strategic priorities:
Pedagogical Influence: shaping teaching and learning practices that cultivate civic identity, imagination, and agency.
Consortium Strength: fortifying the dynamic network of Periclean institutions and building the organizational capacity to support them.
Thought Leadership: elevating stories, research, and practices that inspire the field and reassert higher education’s democratic purpose.
We are working toward a future where civic learning is a defining feature of American higher education, and civic agency and engagement are defining outcomes for every student. We invite you to read the plan, share your thoughts, and partner with us as we enter this next chapter together.
In support of our Thought Leadership priority, Project Pericles has transitioned our newsletter communications to Substack. We invite you to share The Periclean and upcoming articles with colleagues interested in how community-engaged learning strengthens civic life and revitalizes democracy.
In this edition of the Periclean we’ll also be covering:
Our New Website and Tagline
Visit Highlight: The New School’s Social Justice Fair
Applications Live! $7,500 Civic Story Lab Grants
Reminder: Civic Engagement Mini Grant Applications
Periclean Thought Leadership
Events and Opportunities
Staff Reads
Our New Website and Tagline
Alongside the announcement of our strategic plan, we are delighted to launch our new website. Our human-centered designer, Maddie Wolf, spearheaded this effort, working closely with our staff to align its development with our plan.
On our homepage, you will also see our new tagline: “Placing community-engaged civic learning at the heart of higher education.” Dozens of stakeholders participated in a ranked-choice vote, selecting this mission-adapted statement to capture our work in a few brief words.
We encourage you to explore the new site. We hope you’ll find it dynamic and engaging, as it spotlights incredible work by campuses and partners throughout the Periclean consortium.
Visit Highlight: The New School’s Social Justice Fair
Our Executive Director Sanda Balaban recently participated in the Organizing Towards Liberation Social Justice Fair at The New School.
The event was hosted by Project Pericles Program Director Anthony Wilder and Associate Director Kelcia Younis of Eugene Lang College’s Office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice. At the college’s vibrant new Student Hub, the fair buzzed with energy as students interacted with community based organizations to learn about activism opportunities, play Social Justice Bingo, and organize around ways to make a difference on campus and in the community.
The day was anchored around four guiding prompts that resonate far beyond campus:
💡 How can you heal?
💡 What can you learn?
💡 What can you do?
💡 What can you reimagine?
We’d love to hear what prompts or “hooks” you’re using to spark student engagement this semester—let us know!
Applications Live! $7,500 Civic Story Lab Grants
In response to urgent challenges facing democracy and higher education, Project Pericles is launching a new program that lifts up the extraordinary collaborative work happening across our campuses, where students, faculty, and community partners are creating powerful examples of how higher education can serve democracy and the public good. We are thrilled to announce our Request for Proposals for the inaugural Spring 2026 Civic Story Lab Fellowship, which will support campus teams in creating civic stories that inspire change and demonstrate higher ed’s enduring public value.
The Civic Story Lab Fellowship provides teams of students, faculty/staff, and community partners at Periclean institutions $7,500 campus grants to create civic narrative change. Projects will include a storytelling component and a hands-on learning component, with campus teams working with a community partner over the course of the semester while developing multimedia civic stories that amplify their impact.
Applications are due November 10, 2025. Periclean Program Directors are expected to submit the applications, but campus faculty and campus staff should expect to take the lead in preparing them.
Reminder: Civic Engagement Mini Grant Applications
Our Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 PFL and Civic Engagement Mini Grants are open with a priority deadline TODAY!
Civic Engagement Minigrants ($1,000)
Faculty and staff from any higher education institution are invited to apply for our $1,000 mini-grants to design innovative pedagogical, co-curricular, and extracurricular approaches that foster civic learning. Grounded in humanistic inquiry, these grants advance Project Pericles’ mission to reimagine and strengthen democracy by ensuring civic agency and engagement become defining outcomes for every college student. Grants can support courses for the Spring 2026 and Fall 2026 semesters. We will be evaluating applications on a rolling basis.
Periclean Thought Leadership
Sharing highlights of Periclean thought leadership in higher education and notable press coverage.
Chronicle of Higher Education: Disheartened at Vanderbilt
Jason Vadnos, Project Pericles Civic Impact Assistant
Our incredible team member, Jason–who was also just awarded a 2025-2027 The Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service (congratulations!)–had a letter to the editor recently published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, encouraging Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier to prioritize civic engagement.
Science, Literacy Through Experiential Learning: “Literacy Through Experiential Learning”
Katherine Moccio and Bernadette Ludwig
Former Periclean Faculty Leader Grantee Katherine Moccio recipient and Former Wagner College Program Director Bernadette Ludwig co-authored a journal article about experiential curricula in the STEM disciplines.
The Minnesota Star Tribune: We have a common goal of a ‘more perfect Union’
Suzanne M. Rivera (with Corbin Hoornbeek), President of Macalester College
After the assassinations of Rep. Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk, Macalester President Rivera co-authored an Op-Ed about bridging partisan divides.
Dialogue event invites Elon community to talk across difference
Elon University’s Council on Civic Engagement
Elon University hosted a very successful community dialogue for 70+ students on Monday, Sept. 15 in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder encouraging students, faculty and staff to “talk across difference without deepening divides.”
Events and Opportunities
Applications Live! The CoGen Big Ideas Challenge to Reimagine Higher Education
CoGenerate
Our friends at CoGenerate are launching the CoGen Big Ideas Challenge, a bold initiative to reimagine higher education through the power of intergenerational collaboration. They are now accepting applications for up to five innovative models that bring younger and older learners together to strengthen campuses, build economic opportunity, and foster lifelong learning. The deadline is Oct 23, 2025.
Imagining America National Gathering 10/3-10/5: “Senses, Memory, and Community of Practice”
Arielle del Rosario, Project Pericles Associate Director; Mecca Madyun, Drew University Periclean Program Director; and Sinda Nichols, Carleton College Periclean Program Director
Arielle, Mecca, and Sinda will explore how higher education can transform the self and institutions, imagining pathways towards a future with a democracy that works for all. Are you attending Imagining America? Please reach out to arielle@projectpericles.org who would be delighted to connect on-site.
Jesters and Fools: A 15-Minute Film Opportunity
Our friends at Gotham Arts recently produced Jesters and Fools, a 15-minute documentary that uses humor and social science to help students engage constructively across differences. They are now inviting higher-ed institutions to screen the film! Email info@gothamarts.com to request a link to check out the film and visit jestersandfools.com for more information.
What Staff are Reading
Sanda (Executive Director) is reading Eric Hartman’s recent Inside Higher Ed piece, “What’s So Conservative About Civics Anyway?”, which makes the case that civic learning is not and should not be the province of any single ideology. Hartman underscores that preparing students for civic life is a shared, nonpartisan educational mission and cautions against ceding the language and practice of civics to narrowly framed, ideologically-oriented initiatives of any political persuasion.
Arielle (Associate Director) is reading Casey Plett’s On Community, which beautifully explores the complexity of communities in social and political contexts. It also surfaces the inherent tensions between community and exclusivity, and how community has the potential to inflict great harm while also being vital for our collective flourishing.
Jason (Civic Impact Assistant) is reading Jean-Paul Gagnon’s and Benjamin Abrams’ new book, The Sciences of the Democracies, which explores pathways for the discovery of democratic practices and institutions unknown or unfamiliar to conventional Western systems. Drawing upon international forms of governance, oral histories, and animal behavior in nature, this book provides a source for democracy innovation across temporal, spatial, cultural, linguistic, and species contexts.
Harry (Civic Impact and Communications Coordinator) is reading William Deresiewicz’s essays in The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society, which explore a broad set of topics ranging from friendship to higher education.
Maddie (Human-Centered Designer) is reading How to Teach Anything by Peter Hollins, a pedagogical primer that instructs readers in breaking down complex topics for their students and explaining with clarity, while keeping engagement and motivation.
What are YOU reading or listening to?
None of us have enough time to read all that we wish we could, and we appreciate tips from readers and thinkers we admire. We would love to share your suggestions in our next newsletter! Email: sanda@projectpericles.org
If you have a story, event, or publication you’d like us to feature, please reach out to us!
You can email Arielle at arielle@projectpericles.org.