The Columbia Core at Hostos is a professional development initiative sponsored by the Apgar Foundation. Directors Dr. Gregory Marks and Dr. Andrea Fabrizio have collaborated with Director of the Core Curriculum at Columbia University, Dr. Roosevelt Montas, to implement a three-year project designed to draw on the strengths of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum to revise the curriculum of ENG 110 and ENG 111 at Hostos.
Through faculty development seminars, visiting lectures, student essay contests, and off-campus activities we aim to generate a common, whole-text, humanities-based curriculum to be used in the Hostos English composition sequence—the only sequence every student must take.
Our professional development program aims to reshape and adapt the Columbia Core to be responsive to Hostos’ unique campus culture. This course revision will build a community of faculty through professional development initiatives, foster a broad-based learning community among students through a common educational experience, and institute a curriculum based on challenging core humanities texts that will bolster students’ reading and writing skills.