About M-GCP

Between 2008 and 2013, the Mellon Fellow Community Initiative  laid the groundwork for meaningful and long-term cooperation between thirty-six select colleges and universities affiliated with the Appalachian College Association (ACA) and the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) within the context of global citizenship education. The MFCI enabled these institutions to move towards becoming sites of global citizenship by launching new and strengthening existing educational activities and it began to test new models for multi-campus collaboration.

The ACA and HBCU institutions share many common attributes based on their long histories serving unique and diverse student bodies and the broader communities around them.  Their distinct communities and geographical distances, however, have not encouraged collaboration among them.  The MFCI not only encouraged, but actively supported, partnerships between institutions and validated the multiple benefits that resulted from these cooperative efforts.

The Mellon Global Citizenship Program builds on the MFCI by supporting the partner institutions in their efforts to expand collaborative activities and further demonstrate the powerful value-added impact of cooperation among ACA and HBCU institutions. The ultimate goal is to build the case for creating an independent organization that will support ongoing joint projects and initiate new ones while serving as a coordinating hub and resource for all of the institutions’ independent and collaborative global citizenship education activities.  This proposed new organization, conceived as a ‘Global Education Consortium’ to grow out of the M-GCP, will affirm the leadership of the participating colleges and universities in global citizenship education activities and, importantly, deepen the ties among these institutions to strengthen and expand these activities by supporting the development and implementation of cross-institutional projects designed to enhance the colleges’ and universities’ capacities to serve as ‘sites of global citizenship.’