Skip to Content

2008-9 Program Information

Free Minds Project Class

Eligibility

To be eligible to participate, students must:

The application deadline has been extended to July 22, 2008. All applications will be reviewed individually to determine if a potential student's needs match the program's goals. All eligible applicants will be contacted to set up a personal interview between July 1st and August 1st.

Meeting Times and Location

Classes start in late August 2008 and run through May 2009, with holiday breaks. Classes meet one night per week, Tuesday, from 5:30-8:45 pm, at the Cepeda Branch of the Austin Public Library, 651 N. Pleasant Valley Rd., 78702; (512) 974-7372, in East Austin, accessible by Capital Metro Bus Routes: 4, 17, 18, 100, 300, and 451. Students eat dinner together at 5:30 pm. Additional performances, special speakers, writing tutorials, and advising sessions will be scheduled throughout the year. Capitol Metro bus cards are available for students who will be commuting by bus.

Project Philosophy and Goals

Modeled on the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, which originated in New York City under the direction of sociologist Earl Shorris in 1995 and has now spread to communities across the country, Free Minds addresses the divide between the skills-based training usually delivered to people living in poverty and the studia humanitatis, the kind of humanistic education ordinarily reserved for students at elite universities and colleges. Free Minds bridges that divide by engaging students with important works of literature, philosophy, history, and art, through the intensive, discussion-based, seminar experience that is at the heart of a liberal arts education. The Project is founded on the belief that engaging with the humanities can provide students facing serious educational and economic barriers with an otherwise unlikely opportunity to cultivate the power, value, and pleasure of reflection, and that this experience has the ability to change lives.

A central goal of the Free Minds Project is to increase participants' confidence in themselves as citizens, thinkers, and advocates for themselves and their communities. For this reason, all class sessions will be centered on group discussion, not on lectures, and will help students to develop the skills of close reading, analysis, and communication. Because the course emphasizes spoken and written communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, and working together in groups, it complements job-training and job-retention programs, and gives participants an opportunity to continue on to other forms of higher education.

Special Thanks

The Project would like to thank course directors from similar programs around the country for sharing their expertise. Special thanks go to: Martin Kempner (National Director, the Clemente Course in the Humanities), Emily Auerbach (The UW-Madison Odyssey Project), Omar Ali ("We the People," NJ Council for the Humanities), Cheryl Evans (Bloomfield College Kellman Course in the Humanities), Jennifer Allen (Humanity in Perspective, Oregon Council for the Humanities/Reed College).

Staff Contacts

Sylvia Gale, Free Minds Project Consultant and Founding Director
sylviag@mail.utexas.edu

Vivé Griffith, Free Minds Project Director
Humanities Institute
(512) 232-6093
freeminds@humanitiesinstitute.utexas.edu

Erika Leos, Economic Education Coordinator
Foundation Communities
(512) 447-2026 ext. 26
Erika.Leos@Foundcom.org

Mercedes Martinez, Free Minds Project Assistant
Humanities Institute
(512) 232-6093
catawumpus@gmail.com