MISSION AND HISTORY
The -ISM (N.) Project was conceived by the "Roads Scholars," six full time field consultants who traveled around the country for the Campus Outreach Opportunity League, Inc. offering technical assistance, training and consulting to college community centers. During their site visits with hundreds of colleges and universities and with thousands of students, the Roads Scholars discovered that diversity was the most important and volatile issue on students' minds, and that the number one need was for new, more engaging approaches of addressing diversity. It was out of these insights, and based on the experiences of students, that the -ISM (N.) Project was born and has now become an independent project of the Institute for Public Media Arts.
In this project, -ISM (N.) sent out a national request for proposals. Thirty-nine schools (including Augsburg College) had applied from across the country and 12 were invited to participate.
In the beginning of the project, -ISM (N.) courses was offered on those twelve campuses: California State University, Los Angeles; Community College of Denver; Dartmouth College; Loyola University, Chicago; North Carolina Central University; Oregon State University; Pitzer College, Southwest Texas State University; Tulane University; University of Maryland; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and the University of Utah.