The -ISM (N.) Project was conceived in 1994 by the "Roads Scholars", six full time field consultants who traveled around the country for the Campus Outreach Opportunity League, Inc. offering technical assistance, training and consulting to college community centers. During their site vists with hundreds of colleges and universities and with thousands of students, the Roads Scholars discovered that diversity was the most important and volatile issue on students' minds, and that the number one need was for new, more engaging approaches of addressing diversity. It was out of these insights, and based on the experiences of students, that the -ISM (N.) Project was born and has now become an independent project of the Institute for Public Media Arts.

From March through June 1995, -ISM (N.) sent out a national request for proposals. By May, 39 schools had applied from across the country and 12 were invited to participate. In October of 1995, the 36 local project directors gathered for a national meeting to engage participants in exercises that modeled what the students were going to be experiencing in their courses: building teamwork among the three member teaching team; defining the convergence of the three components of the courses (academics, video production and reflection); and establishing individual course objectives.

In the Spring of 1996, the first tier of -ISM (N.) courses was offered on those twelve campuses:

California State University, Los Angeles
Community College of Denver
Dartmouth College
Loyola University, Chicago
North Carolina Central University
Oregon State University
Pitzer College
Southwest Texas State University
Tulane University
University of Maryland
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Utah

In 1997 we selected seven additional schools for a second pilot of the -ISM (N.) curricula model:

Central Washington University
Golden West College
University of Arizona
University of Central Florida
University of Massachusetts
University of Michigan
Webster University

Find out more about what happened at the nineteen -ISM (N.) schools......

Find out more about what the -ISM (N.) Project plans for the future...