Innovation and Discovery

What is Education For? (threading 3 different bodies of work.)

[Amy wrote this with her robot pet.] We’re always looking ahead at ways to adapt to a changing world. Since 2020, we’ve studied global trends, funded fresh ideas, and supported their growth to make a bigger impact, asking the big questions, like “What is education for?” and explore how learning can help solve major social issues.

We focus on strengthening democracy by encouraging civic engagement, expanding educational programs, and teaching students to recognize misinformation. At the same time, we’re looking at climate change by helping colleges shape policies, integrate climate studies, and prepare students for green jobs. By funding new ideas and building strong partnerships, we’re working to stay at the forefront of innovation, education, and social change.

and link to their: PressForward

We gave pre 10M and we’re not sure what they’re doing with it.

Strengthening democracy

Since 2021, Lumina has focused on strengthening democracy and promoting civic engagement. We’ve built on existing civic movements in higher education and Lumina’s mission, which includes “active citizenship” as a core goal. Graduates should not only vote but be active in their communities, know how to work across difference, and be able to tell good information from bad. Though most colleges offer opportunities for this kind of learning, their efforts are often isolated, only available to students who seek them out, and not connected to a national strategy.

Our work is addressing three main areas:

• Conditions for democratic renewal and redesign: Working with partners both inside and outside higher education, we have examined how to link improved democracy with better opportunities for all, explored new bipartisan efforts, and developed new frameworks and training programs for institutional leaders.
• Teaching and learning for active citizenship: We have worked with partners inside higher education to scale innovative civic and community-based learning experiences and deepen the evidence base of the factors contributing to their success. We are exploring how to aggregate resources and help institutions improve their ability to diagnose and respond to identified challenges re: democratic and civic engagement.
• We are also considering including more sectors and new perspectives in this work.
  Response to threats to freedom to learn: We have worked with content experts and higher education membership organizations to develop resources on promoting resilience and resistance to hate, extremism, and polarization.

Lumina supports democracy-strengthening work in other portfolios as well, notably including Strategic Communication’s support for local journalism. [HAVE STEPHANIE INCLUDE MORE?]