Wesleyan College is pleased to announce that the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) has awarded a Continuing Collaboration grant to expand a partnership between Wesleyan College and Claflin University, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) located in South Carolina. The two institutions are joining together to share online classes in the humanities as a way of providing students with more educational opportunitites. Through the new grant, Wesleyan will be creating four new online humanities courses, while Claflin will be updating four of their current online humanities courses and creating five new ones.

“Wesleyan has a strong online program for our adult students studying business and accounting, and our new online humanities courses will provide our traditional students more online options,” said Wesleyan Provost Dr. Melody Blake.

Both Wesleyan and Clafin participated in a previous grant funded by the CIC to develop online classes. Through that grant the two institutions developed new classes and students could take classes at either institution.

 “This grant will build on that previous experience. Wesleyan students can enjoy the benefits of taking a class at an HBCU and Claflin students can experience learning at a women’s college,” said Provost Blake.

CIC President Richard Ekman said, “Online teaching and learning has tremendous potential to sustain the humanities at smaller liberal arts colleges. By sharing courses that might be under-enrolled at a single institution, humanities programs can maximize the use of their instructional resources and offer their students a wider range of high quality courses.”