The 2025–26 academic year marked a major milestone for the Literacies for Life and Career initiative.

The program’s 11 core literacies — previously piloted in Arts & Sciences classrooms by a self-selecting group of early adopter faculty — scaled up into all 1000- and 2000-level courses. 

The program began with small, intentional steps. Led by co-directors Erin McGlothlin, vice dean of undergraduate affairs, and Andrew C. Butler, professor of education and psychological and brain sciences, the team gathered extensive faculty feedback to identify a set of essential skills that define an Arts & Sciences education. Faculty then make sure to highlight these literacies within coursework, helping students recognize and articulate their value. 

“The literacies were developed and iteratively refined by faculty across Arts & Sciences with an emphasis on elevating the core learning objectives that we already shared,” Butler said. “Having a common language and shared goals helps foster faculty community and support pedagogical excellence."

This year’s expansion tested a key question: How would literacies translate across the wide range of learning environments in Arts & Sciences?

Of the 11 literacies, critical and interpretive skills emerged as one of the most widely adopted. This literacy focuses on analyzing media, including information that might be complex or ambiguous, to discover insights and underlying meanings. For the 2025-2026 academic year, participating faculty chose to highlight critical and interpretive skills in 62% of course sections in social sciences, 48% of course sections in humanities, and 23% of course sections in natural sciences.

Being able to critically examine media makes sense as a core skill for college students, especially first- and second-year students. But this literacy is applied in different ways across different classrooms.

Critical and interpretive skills seem like a natural fit for a humanities course like “50 Years of Hip-Hop,” a two-semester Ampersand Program taught by Jonathan Fenderson, associate professor of African and African American Studies, and Zachary Manditch-Prottas, senior lecturer in African and African American Studies and American Culture Studies. But applying the literacy went beyond analyzing the lyrics and instrumentals that make up rap music, the duo says. Students also study album artwork and visit historical hip-hop landmarks as part of a class trip to New York City.

“It’s not just the sound,” Fenderson said. “It’s putting the music into a social-historical context so you can see that it’s all part of a broader conversation.”

“Our students’ entry point is usually the music,” Manditch-Prottas said. “But some of their most exciting thinking happens when they start to see how it speaks to all these other social and cultural milieus.” 

Anthony Smith, a senior lecturer in biology, and Jennifer Arch, a teaching professor in English, lead a four-semester Ampersand Program in the natural sciences, “The Hallmarks of Cancer and Patient Care.” One of the courses in the program, “The Language of Cancer,” focuses on how cancer is discussed in academic, creative, and medical writings. In this course, critical and interpretive skills mean thinking critically about the specific words authors and speakers choose when describing cancer.

“We challenged the students to go beyond the words on the paper,” Smith said. “We wanted them to go a few layers deeper in terms of meaning, as well as how it affected them based on their own set of values.”

Students had to apply the literacy in one of the hardest challenges of the semester: analyzing a dense, jargon-filled academic article and then translating it into language that a grade schooler could understand. Smith and Arch’s students visited a local third-grade classroom and presented their findings to the children there.

“Our students came up with all these fun games and inventive analogies,” Smith said. “What we were talking about, critiquing communication and interpreting how you would communicate to someone with a different background, really hit home for them.”

For Foundations in Public Health, a 1000-level social sciences course with more than 170 students, critical and interpretive skills proved crucial in introducing students to the complex, multilayered world of public health.

“When we were designing this course, critical and interpretive skills meant being able to analyze evidence, place it in context, and ask questions about power, ethics, and equity,” said Mohammed Abba-Aji, a lecturer in public health and society who taught the course this year alongside E.A. Quinn, an associate professor of anthropology. “Public health problems are complex. Students need to engage with that complexity, rather than looking for simple answers.”

Students rose to the challenge. In their course evaluations, many noted that they appreciated the push to think more deeply about public health, citing assignments that asked them to connect broad concepts with their own communities and lived experiences.

“Critical and interpretive skills shouldn’t be optional,” Abba-Aji said. “It’s necessary in every course, because any field that isn’t challenged stands the risk of becoming dogma. We challenge our assumptions and what we know so that we can know better.”