About
The Best Practices project was born of a question asked by faculty of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, which for more than 25 years has successfully brought college humanities classes to adults who face barriers to education: Are there common principles and practices across our classrooms nationwide that can account for our success? And if so, would it have value beyond our own courses?
In 2022 we assembled a working group that included experienced teachers in and beyond our network to explore these questions. Collectively, we have taught for hundreds of semesters, in large cities and rural areas, in community-based programs and prison settings, at community colleges and four-year universities across the United States. We are eager to share what we’ve learned.
These resource pages present what we found to be most salient and valuable for creating the kind of humanities classrooms we aspire to in our own teaching, though we believe it appropriate for any discipline or setting. A more in-depth conversation can be found in the downloadable guide, Best Practices for Teaching (the Humanities) to Nontraditional Students. Above all, we hope this project leads to a larger conversation about how best to serve and support all students in a changing and often challenging educational system.
Our Team
Jack Cheng got a broad, Great Books education as an undergraduate at Columbia College and went deep in his graduate studies in art history at Harvard University. He has taught art history at the Clemente Course in the Humanities in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston since 2001, served as the academic director or co-director of the course for 12 years and has also taught and directed Clemente Veterans Initiatives for mixed classes of veterans and civilians. He also works as an advertising copywriter and an archaeologist, and enjoys playing guitar in a mom-rock band.
Vivé Griffith, Project Lead, directed Austin’s Clemente Course, Free Minds, for ten years and has taught Creative Writing in the program since 2007. She has worked with the national Clemente Course as Director of Outreach and Engagement and Academic Director of Alumni Programming. Vivé earned an MFA in poetry at The University of Texas’s Michener Center for Writers and an MA in English at the University of Cincinnati. She is a member of the faculty at Austin Community College and originated the course Teaching Writing for Social Change at The University of Texas. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, The Sun, Missouri Review, and Oxford American.
Lela Hilton founded the first, and still the only rural Clemente Course in 1999 in Port Hadlock, Washington where she served as Academic Director for 16 years. In 2007 she received the Humanities Washington award for this work. She worked with the Clemente Course nationally from 2014 until 2024, serving as both Executive and National Program Director. She is a graduate of Antioch University with a BA in environmental studies and an MA in adult education. She has served as a board member with various non-profit organizations focusing on environmental education and restoration, at-risk youth, rural economic development, arts and culture. She lives in Chimacum, WA.
Amy Jamgochian is the Chief Academic Officer at Mount Tamalpais College (MTC), where she has served students at San Quentin State Prison since 2015. In this work, she advocates for access to high quality education and inclusive learning opportunities for incarcerated people. Before joining MTC, she was a Lecturer in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, where she also earned her Ph.D. Her path to UC Berkeley included a state college, a community college, a women’s college, and a Master’s degree in English in New Zealand, alongside jobs at coffee shops, bookstores, and an academic press. She has no spare time, but dreams of a day when she can write and travel.
Gina Ocasion is an Assistant Professor of English at CT State Manchester Community College and the Academic Director of the Springfield, Massachusetts Clemente Course. These positions intersect through a shared investment in accessible education for more equitable communities. She earned her doctorate in English at UMass Amherst, and designs and teaches courses in writing, Filipino Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Childhood Studies.
Kathryn Pope has served as Co-Director of Antioch University's Bridge Program since 2006. Kathryn is a core faculty member in the Undergraduate Studies Department at Antioch, where she teaches academic and creative writing courses. Kathryn holds an MFA in creative writing, an MA in Urban Sustainability, and boundless enthusiasm for learning.