Message from Dean Schaberg

“Excellence in Pedagogy and Innovative Classrooms (EPIC) Program is a partnership between UCLA Division of Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation designed to develop to the fullest, in our faculty and in our students, the art of teaching that lies at the heart of humanities disciplines. Teaching has been a part of our disciplines since their origins, and we have long offered models of effective teaching for the university and for the world beyond academia. But as the world changes and as our students change with it, there are inevitably opportunities to do better and even—if we dedicate ourselves to the task—to be the best at what we do. How can we make the real diversity of every one of our classes a source of excellence and an opportunity for learning of the kind that changes lives? How can we use insights from the teaching of writing and of languages to make all our teaching better? How can we take advantage of data and technology in a way that deepens our teaching without undoing the humanistic spirit of our work? How, more generally, can we deepen the ties between our research and our teaching, and in this way give our students the broadest possible view of the values of humanistic study? And how can we best prepare our graduate students to be valued for their learning and for their teaching wherever their careers take them, whether in academia or beyond? EPIC is a call for a cultural change across the humanities disciplines at UCLA. It is an invitation to focus anew on our privileged role as practitioners of the art of teaching and an invitation to strive for nothing less than brilliance in this art. I hope that you will support the work and its aims.” –David Schaberg, Dean of Humanities