The University of 91�Թ� has been awarded nearly $4 million in a four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to fund a new initiative that will incorporate tools and strategies for teaching critical thinking into college classrooms around the country.

Supporting a project called Integrating Civil Discourse into the Curriculum at Public, Private, Community, and Historically Minority-Serving Colleges and Universities (ICDC), the grant comes out of the DOE’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education Special Projects Program, which focuses on, among other priorities, protecting and promoting civil discourse in higher education.

In support of that mission, ICDC brings together a team of faculty from universities and colleges around the country with nonprofit leaders to integrate two online technologies that teach critical thinking into undergraduate curricula.

“We’re going to ask this question, ‘Can we expand the reach of effective critical thinking strategies in ways that could impact how we dialogue with each other on a national scale?’” said , an assistant teaching professor in the and director of the . He and North Carolina State University professor Gary Comstock are leading ICDC as co-primary investigators.

Blaschko has been using ThinkArguments, one of ICDC’s two technological tools, for over three years to teach philosophical argumentation in the signature 91�Թ� class . Produced by nonprofit ThinkerAnalytix, ThinkArguments is an online course with 10 lessons that train students in argument mapping, a method of informal reasoning that visualizes the structure of an argument. The course has thousands of LSAT-inspired practice questions targeting different critical thinking skills.

“Teaching is a core part of 91�Թ�’s mission, so to have an institutional stake in education in this country on a broader scale can be one crucial way we live out that mission.”

Blaschko noticed the impact of ThinkArguments in his classes the first time he used it.

“The arguments students were offering — it just seemed like something was clicking that hadn’t been clicking before,” he said.

To quantify that change, Blaschko started measuring students’ critical thinking gains with pre- and post-tests. He recorded an average growth rate of 16% — a significant improvement. It was something he wanted to replicate.

That’s where ICDC comes in. The grant, administered by , will fund summer workshops that convene faculty from around the country to train them in the basics of ThinkArguments and how to effectively integrate the technology into their courses. They’ll also use the tool Sway, an AI chat platform that coaches students with differing perspectives through difficult discussions. Disagree Wisely, a Florida nonprofit, leads research on Sway's educational impact and supports its deployment across institutions. The impact of incorporating those technologies into hundreds of classrooms will be measured in the same way Blaschko did it.

The project has the potential to break new ground in higher education. While critical thinking skills are often touted as a key outcome of a humanities education, Blascko said, actually teaching and assessing critical thinking competence is challenging, especially in larger classes. ICDC’s strategies confront this issue by narrowing in on a concrete set of skills that can be applied in any situation involving a search for truth.

“Students are gaining habits of mind that they can apply in reading comprehension, writing, and verbal argumentation and dialogue, both in the classroom and outside of it,” Blaschko said.

Blaschko and the other members of ICDC’s steering committee estimate the project will reach more than 100,000 students just within the grant’s lifetime, with an even greater impact beyond the next four years as their research advances critical thinking education in the U.S.

“It’s really meaningful to be working with the Department of Education on the front lines of pedagogy, research, and practice,” Blaschko said. “Teaching is a core part of 91�Թ�’s mission, so to have an institutional stake in education in this country on a broader scale can be one crucial way we live out that mission.”

Originally published by Adah McMillan at on February 03, 2026.

, the Robert M. Conway Director of the and a professor of history, and , a professor in the , are two of the 198 scholars, scientists and artists chosen based on their prior career achievement and exceptional promise.

The Guggenheim Foundation has granted more than $400 million in fellowships to more than 19,000 people over the past century, including members of national academies, Pulitzer Prize winners and more than 125 Nobel laureates.

“We are thrilled to see two of our scholars receive this prestigious recognition from the Guggenheim Foundation,” said , associate dean for the humanities and equity and the Coyle Professor of Literacy Education. “This support for their work is testament to their groundbreaking scholarship and insightful analysis, and it underscores the strength and caliber of the research done throughout our history department.”

Engaging the religious other

Burman will use his fellowship to finish a book he’s been working on for more than a decade, tentatively titled “Beyond the Mediterranean: The Intellectual Venture of Ramon Martí.”

Martí, a 13th-century Dominican friar, wrote enormous works exploring and refuting Judaism. He also wrote shorter works directed at Islam, which was unusual for a medieval Latin European scholar.

“This book is an attempt to take in the full arc of Martí’s career and also — maybe more significantly — to place it in a broader intellectual context than he’s been looked at in before,” Burman said.

Burman, the past recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has spent most of his career examining interactions across religious divides during the Middle Ages.

“There’s a lot of interesting research about what ordinary people in medieval Europe thought about Judaism and Islam,” Burman said. “But I’ve always been most interested in what the people who know the other religions best think about these religions. How do they engage this religious other?”

Burman’s research will also be aided by his recently awarded membership at the in Princeton, New Jersey, and he will spend the next year there working on his book and collaborating with other medievalists in his cohort.

“Both of these recognitions have been aspirations that, for most of my career, seemed well beyond me,” he said. “So I’m equally delighted to be spending a year there.”

Self-representation in the African diaspora

In “Making Malambo: Free Black Collectivity in Early Spanish America,” historian Graubart will examine how a free African-descent community in colonial Panama represented itself in conversation with Spanish officials.

In the late 16th century, Spanish King Philip II imposed a new tax on all free Black people and people with mixed African heritage within the empire. In response, the targeted community in Panama organized a collective petition detailing their challenges and accomplishments.

“My work provides ways to think about not only what kind of work they did, and how they were overlooked by so many, but also what kind of influence they were able to exercise over these proceedings,” Graubart said.

Graubart — who is also , and whose work has been previously supported by and — will travel during her fellowship year to both Peru and Panama to scour archives that may be relevant to her research.

She is particularly interested in Catholic archives, as she recently received the from the , in partnership with the , to research Black Catholicism.

“The Catholic Church provided semi-autonomous spaces for enslaved and free people to organize for worship and festivals, including in Panama,” she said. “So I will be thinking about how Catholicism might have shaped their collectivity.”

Continuing a legacy

The College of Arts & Letters’ offers support to faculty across the arts, humanities and social sciences in applying for major national and international fellowships, including the Guggenheim.

With the addition of Burman and Graubart, 24 Arts & Letters faculty members have won Guggenheims in the last 25 years.

In 2024, 91�Թ� awardees were , the Rev. John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy; Program of Liberal Studies professor ; and associate professor of English .

“Our faculty continue to demonstrate a broad and urgent commitment to the public good of scholarship in the liberal arts,” said , director of the Franco Institute and associate dean for research and strategic initiatives. “Thomas and Karen are the two latest examples of critical work done throughout the College to expand our understanding of the past in a way that vitally informs our present.”

Originally published by Adah McMillan at on April 24, 2025.