Periclean Faculty Leaders
Swarthmore College community members continue to be active in Project Pericles’ initiatives. Since 2010, Swarthmore College faculty regularly have been recognized by the Periclean Faculty Leaders (PFL)™ program. Project Pericles, created by Eugene M. Lang ‘38 and directed by Jan R. Liss, represents a consortium of colleges and universities that promote civic engagement within higher education. The Periclean Faculty Leaders (PFL)™ program stands out as one of the organization’s most successful innovations: a national cohort of scholars who incorporate civic engagement into the curriculum and empower students to employ their academic knowledge on real-world problems. The PFL program seeks to cultivate Engaged Scholarship in under-represented divisions such as the Humanities and STEM. In recent years the Lang Center, on behalf of Swarthmore College, has nominated a growing cohort of faculty members who have all been selected as PFLs. Project Pericles provides each PFL with a $4,000 grant to support Engaged Scholarship courses and campus-community collaborations, and frequently convenes these scholars for high-profile presentations at national venues such as the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AACU) annual meeting. The program also pairs PFLs from different campuses for conversation, idea-sharing, and peer feedback. Recent awardees include Désirée Díaz, Christopher Graves, Mark Wallace, Lei Ouyang, Barbara Thelamour, and Edwin Mayorga from disciplines across the Humanities and Social Sciences.