Innovations

Throughout her career, Cathy N. Davidson has pioneered dozens of educational innovations–for how we teach, how we run and organize learning institutions, and how we publish, collaborate, and do research together.

She came to the Graduate Center CUNY in 2014 as Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the Futures Initiative, “advancing equity and innovation in higher education.” Previously, she served as the first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University and is the cofounder and director of the world’s first and oldest academic social network, the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC.org).

Innovations

Cathy standing on Fifth Ave, Graduate Center, CUNY

ACADEMIC INNOVATIONS 2000-Present: HASTAC  Cofounder and Codirector In 2000-2001 Cathy N. Davidson (Duke University) and David Theo Goldberg (University of California Humanities Research Institute) worked with other academics and technology experts to create HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory or “Haystack”).  NSF has called it “the world’s first and oldest academic social Innovations

CUNY Humanities Alliance

The CUNY Humanities Alliance, with generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is dedicated to training Ph.D. students in the most successful methods for teaching humanities courses in some of the country’s most diverse undergraduate classrooms. Co-directed by Cathy N. Davidson, the Humanities Alliance is a partnership between the Graduate Center and LaGuardia Community CUNY Humanities Alliance

Structuring Equality: A Handbook for Student-Centered Learning and Teaching Practices

The essays in this collection were written collaboratively, with feedback, insights, discussion, and inspiration from the dozen students in “American Literature, American Learning,” a graduate class taught by Cathy N. Davidson.  Thanks to a grant from the Teagle Foundation, a team of undergraduates were taught how to do professional copy editing, proofreading, and book design Structuring Equality: A Handbook for Student-Centered Learning and Teaching Practices

Mapping the Futures of Higher Education

Conceived and taught by Futures Initiative Director Cathy N. Davidson and Graduate Center President Emeritus William P. Kelly, Mapping the Futures of Higher Education was a radically interdisciplinary graduate class that used innovative pedagogy and a new open source online tool to connect and network more than 365 undergraduate students across ten CUNY colleges, each Mapping the Futures of Higher Education

Futures Initiative: The Graduate Center, City University of New York

In July 2014, Cathy Davidson moved to New York to direct the Futures Initiative, a new way of supporting graduate students as the next generation of leaders of institutional and classroom change.  The Futures Initiative sponsors events, programs, workshops, and courses all designed to inspire creative, innovative, interactive, peer-led new ways of learning, teaching, and Futures Initiative: The Graduate Center, City University of New York

MOOC Interventions: The History and Future of (Mostly Higher) Education

“The History and Future of Higher Education” is a multi-institutional collaborative project initiated by the HASTAC alliance, under leadership of Cathy Davidson, which is coordinating the teaching of a number of diverse courses, workshops, and reading groups, in different locations and online, on the future of higher education beginning in January of  2014.  At the MOOC Interventions: The History and Future of (Mostly Higher) Education

First educator on Board of Mozilla

Cathy Davidson joined the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors in July 2012. She had previously organized and hosted the “Storming the Academy” with her students at the 2010 Mozilla Festival, collaborated on the development of Mozilla Open Badges, and actively advised Mozilla on the development of ‘web literacy’ skills map. Mozilla’s original announcement page Mozilla’s townhall First educator on Board of Mozilla