The Baker Trust
for Transformative Learning
Drawing on our Jesuit ideals and traditions, and 21st century knowledge about learning, the Baker Trust supports Georgetown’s commitment to be an institution committed to values-based responses to the world’s greatest challenges
Cultivating Changemakers
Shaped by Ignatian principles, redefine ‘whole-person education’ for the 21st century. Educate changemakers through the qualities that make us most human.
Re-bundling Educational Practices
Generate new educational practices by flexing time, space, costs and by applying the most effective capacities of emerging digital tools.
Addressing Existential Challenges
Reshape curricular and educational practices to dismantle systemic injustice: Racial Justice, Environmental Justice.
Vision and Impact Report (2019-2023)
The Vision and Impact report provides an overview and scope of the projects and initiatives supported by the Baker Trust for Transformative Learning from 2019–2023. The report outlines nearly 40 investments across eight strategic priorities and 22 campus units and departments.
Progress Report: Phase I (July 2019-December 2020)
Here we track the progress of a portfolio of projects collectively advancing the seven strategic goals of the Baker Trust. This report highlights the innovative approaches supported with Baker Trust funds being implemented across campus. This report shares the investments of the Baker Trust for Transformative Learning, for the first eighteen months, from July 2019 through the end of the Fall semester 2020.
News: Baker Trust to fund Provost's strategic Initiative on Pedagogical uses of Artificial Intelligence (IPAI)
April 20, 2023 — The provost office appointed a task force of faculty and learning design specialists, led by Eddie Maloney of CNDLS and Randy Bass of the Red House. The goal of the initiative is to support faculty trial uses of AI systems in a wide variety of class settings. Open to all faculty, from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences; to all schools; to all levels of teaching, both undergraduate and graduate programs. The initiative is made possible by the generous philanthropic support from the Baker Trust for Transformative Learning and the Sonneborn Innovation Fund.
News: Baker Trust to fund a strategic initiative on Curriculum Transformation to Advance Racial Justice
October 21, 2020 — Provost Robert Groves announced the launch of a new initiative, supported by the Baker Trust, that seeks to develop a sustained process to engage undergraduate and graduate faculty and programs in curricular revisions that promote ways of knowing, thinking, and responding to structural racism and systemic injustice.
The Baker Trust will fund support for coordination, implementation, and evaluation. There will be targeted, transformative funding in the form of unit-level grants for analysis, development, and implementation of transformative curricular revisions. The initiative will be coordinated through the Red House, where faculty/staff leadership will serve as conveners and architects of the cycles of support.
Evolution of the Baker Trust
The Baker Trust for Transformative Learning is made possible through the generosity of Jon (C’ 62) and Pat Baker. In 2019, the Baker Center for Leadership & Governance became part of the Baker Trust for Transformational Learning, housed within the Red House. Directed by Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, Randy Bass, the Baker Trust fosters educational innovation and university-wide collaboration across Georgetown University. With an initial current use investment of $20 million to be spent over ten years to fuel the spread of pedagogical change across Georgetown University, the Baker Trust sits in the Office of the Provost and is part of the Red House, serving as a funding engine for strategic learning initiatives.
Baker Trust Catalyst Projects
In Fall 2019, the Red House launched a year-long pilot phase in which it began to invest Baker Trust funding into a portfolio of projects across campus that strategically advances the shared mission of the University, the Red House, and the Baker Trust.
A resource for curricular initiatives, the strategic investments of the Baker Trust power Georgetown’s ability to adapt to a changing paradigm for learning that is defined by transformative education. Baker Trust funding supports both school-based and cross-boundary initiatives that drive curricular innovation on all levels. From course level to curricular, the Baker Trust invests in projects in all phases of implementation, from exploratory design to prototypes and scaled pilots and ongoing evaluation in order to drive curricular change.
Conflict Transformation Lab
A cross-boundary initiative that facilitates learning engagements designed to help Georgetown students cultivate essential competencies, gain skills and experience in addressing polarization through intergroup dialogue and intercultural competency.
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Placemaking
Developed in response to student feedback, Placemaking launched as a new pilot in the SFS. Through this guided, self-designed course students pair introspection and reflection with experiential learning around the uniqueness of the place they inhabit for the semester.
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