History

The Sharing Cultures Project, initially funded in 2001 by an Alumni Initiative Award (AIA) from the Fulbright Foundation, creates two interconnected, on-line writing and learning communities between Columbia College Chicago, USA and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NNMU), Port Elizabeth, South Africa: a cross-cultural writing, planning, and sharing community between the teaching teams at both institutions and a cultural, digital, and print literacy exchange community for “under-powered” students enrolled in basic writing courses at Columbia College and first-year language and life skills courses at NMMU.

NMMU, formerly the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE) historically was an all-white, Afrikaans institution. UPE has grown into NNMU and is now regarded as one of the most racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse universities in Southern Africa. The full NNMU was established in January 2005 through the merging of 3 institutions totaling more than 22,000 students. NNMU supports students of diverse linguistic and educational backgrounds through a year-long bridge program, the University Advancement Program, and an English Language foundations support program. Columbia College Chicago (CCC) is an open-admissions, liberal arts college with an arts, media, and communications focus in downtown Chicago with more than 10,000 students. Columbia supports students of diverse linguistic and educational backgrounds who need academic support with a bridge program and a sequence of developmental reading and writing courses. Both institutions are committed to educational opportunity, and students and teachers involved in the educational support and literacy programs their home institutions are actively involved in the online Sharing Cultures Project.

In the first two years of the project, Fulbright funding provided a transatlantic exchange for teachers and administrators from both teams as well as salary for a project leader. Since then, each school has worked to provide funding and support for the project in the form of course releases, faculty exchange, and discussion of a permanent budget. As evidence of its continued growth, the teaching team currently numbers eleven, with seven faculty actively teaching, three faculty shadowing and learning the program in order to rotate into the project, and two faculty advising as former teachers. Each school chooses its own form of project management, but the teams continue to share goals and objectives.

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