Bryan Port serves as the Director for the Center for Government and Civic Service at Austin Community College.

Bryan and his team bring civic engagement to life in new and innovative ways, and I invite you to learn about what they offer both to ACC’s students and the broader Austin community.

My guests today are Arun John, Kelly Greenwood, Grant Potts and Ted Hadzi-Antich, and they’ll be talking about their work on the Character Education Initiative at Austin Community College. I think this work has the potential for profound impact on the way that we think about both teaching and learning, and invite you to imagine the possibilities along with us.

This episode features discussion of Claire Elise Katz' "Stolen Valor: How the Humanities '@ Work' Are Hidden in Plain Sight".

• (00:00:00) - Austin Community Conversations: The Character Education Initiative
• (00:02:42) - Interview with Ted Hatziancic and Grant Potts
• (00:03:28) - Teaching at ACC: A Motley Crue
• (00:07:19) - The Mission of Character Education at ACC
• (00:18:30) - Post-Bacc MS in Technology
• (00:19:10) - Philosophy of Character and Virtue
• (00:22:13) - Virtues of Learning Math
• (00:24:09) - The moralization of higher education
• (00:28:26) - Questions about human flourishing in higher education
• (00:37:41) - The value of liberal arts education
• (00:44:46) - Enable Faculty: Character Education
• (00:52:59) - Faculty on the Character Education Initiative
• (01:01:42) - What Would You Want Your Community College Students to Know?
• (01:02:13) - The Future of Character Education
• (01:06:32) - The College Community Initiative

Ted Hadzi-Antich is a government professor and one of the founders of the Great Questions Seminar at ACC. Here you’ll learn about how the Seminar focuses on the fundamental elements of close readings of source texts, open ended discussion, and classroom community. By the end, I think you’ll find it easy to see why this pedagogy has captured the attention of media outlets ranging from the New York Times to the Chronicle of Higher Education, along with major four-year universities who have been surprised and inspired by what our faculty and students achieve together.

• (00:00:00) - Austin Community Conversations
• (00:02:13) - Teaching at ACC: The First Year
• (00:06:33) - In the Elevator With Students
• (00:08:07) - The Importance of Feeling Like An Impersonator
• (00:10:52) - The Great Questions Seminar
• (00:16:06) - The Character Education of Community Colleges
• (00:18:55) - The Great Questions Seminar
• (00:26:23) - A Day in the Life: The Good Life
• (00:29:01) - A Sense of Agency in College
• (00:31:21) - Community Colleges: The Career-Ready Student
• (00:37:43) - The mission of the student success class
• (00:40:19) - Community Colleges: The Diversity of Students
• (00:47:29) - Great Questions: The Pedagogical Model
• (00:53:00) - The Great Questions Program at Austin Community College