UNC Pembroke faculty showcased how they redesigned their classes to support the university’s Indigenous Cultures & Communities (ICC) graduation requirement in an article published in December in The Journal of Effective Teaching in Higher Education, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that advances the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) focused on institutions of higher education.

In “Indigenous cultures and communities in higher education teaching and learning,” co-authors Kelly Barber-Lester, Joshua Busman, Camille Locklear Goins, Scott Hicks, Elizabeth Jones and Jennifer Jones-Locklear describe the establishment of the ICC graduation requirement, survey the importance of Indigenous-centered knowledge and pedagogy in higher education teaching and learning, and present their transformation of courses in education, English, library, music and nursing as models and templates for faculty beyond UNCP.

The article is available at https://jethe.org/index.php/jethe/issue/view/12.

The co-authors were members of a shared interest group formerly sponsored by the TLC focused on supporting the development and ongoing improvement of ICC-designated classes through partnership with the Museum of the Southeast American Indian, monthly discussions of scholarly literature, and collaborative exchange of syllabi and learning activities related to Indigenous cultures, communities and pedagogies.

The article is the culmination of a collaborative presentation Barber-Lester, Busman, Goins, Hicks, Jones and Jones-Locklear presented at the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy at Virginia Tech in February 2023. It curates practical and philosophical methods for engaging Indigenous knowledge and using Indigenous-centered pedagogies in college courses and curricula

Since fall 2023, the ICC graduation requirement–completion of two ICC-designated courses or cocurricular experiences for students entering with 60 or fewer credit hours or completion of one ICC-designated course or cocurricular experience for transfer students entering with 60 or more credit hours–instills in UNCP students an increased awareness and appreciation of Indigenous cultures and communities, both in Southeast North Carolina and worldwide.