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Launched in 2006, the Focused Inquiry classes are built around best practices — small class size, student-centered classroom, spiral curriculum, and a cohort model — shown to maximize academic success. And they work. The year before Focused Inquiry began, only 73% of freshmen at VCU ended the year “in good standing.” Today that number is 84%.
The university's administration told 20% percent of the Department of Focused Inquiry their contracts won't be renewed.
If the worst-case scenario is realized, VCU will have to cut between 100 and 150 jobs.
Virginia Commonwealth University faculty members who teach Focused Inquiry courses for new students say the institution may cut a third of their jobs. Faculty members in a Virginia Commonwealth University department that’s supposed to teach new students core skills say the university has proposed laying off about a third of them. “The impact that this would have would be devastating to student success and retention given that our unit is so focused on the well-being and prosperity of our students,” said Ryan Cales, who’s in his 12th year teaching in the Focused Inquiry Department.
The Black men who drove horse-drawn carriages through the streets of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia were both everywhere and invisible during the Jim Crow era.