What are the goals and objectives of Critical Encounters?

Critical Encounters will address two sets of goals -- one written primarily from the perspective of Columbia College and the other written with ultimate consideration of the community partners and society at large.  For Columbia College, Critical Encounters will: 

• Provide teaching and learning opportunities within and across the disciplines at Columbia College to allow for free critical discourse among students, faculty and staff, in understanding the issues and questions on topics of human significance.
• Lead to the development of new educational resources and models for teaching that engage students and faculty in crucial conversations and difficult dialogues that translate the knowledge and skills associated with liberal and practicing arts into the habits of active citizenship and life-long learning.
• Strengthen Columbia College’s ties to the local, national and global communities by bringing together diverse constituencies to address the central questions of the chosen issue in new and innovative ways.
• Build bridges through ongoing scholarship, study, exhibitions, performances and discussions that culminate in public events, programs and publications featuring the work of students, faculty, staff and other members of the community.
• Revolutionize the way that students, faculty and staff at Columbia College may think about the relationship between art and activism.

In its commitment to community, Critical Encounters will:

• Seek the knowledge and expertise of those outside the walls of Columbia College in an effort to expand the scope of critical discourse, further strengthening the college’s teaching and learning opportunities.
• Lead to the development of new knowledge, information, programs and initiatives that will serve the needs and concerns of the community groups that partner with Columbia College.
• Strengthen Columbia College’s ties to the local, national and global communities by presenting a visible commitment to civic engagement.
• Revolutionize a collective understanding of social activism through critical, creative and conscious engagement of the arts in issues most relevant to the future success of humanity.