Welcome to the web site of the National Great Books Curriculum Academic Community. This free academic resource focuses on the writings and authors found in Encyclopaedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World. The web site has been developed with funding from the United States Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The materials you will find as you explore this site have been written, adapted, and used by faculty and staff in a national consortium of urban colleges - mainly public community colleges - that employ the Great Books as the primary source texts in a wide variety of undergraduate courses in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The course descriptions, instructional supplements, and other resources are presented in a user-friendly fashion and can be easily adapted for local versions of Great Books curricula. In addition, model Great Books programs, such as Wilbur Wright College's nationally recognized curriculum, are profiled; Wright's profile includes research showing significant academic achievement and personal growth among those members of the college's large minority student population who complete the Great Books Curriculum. Wright's program model has influenced the design of Great Books curricula elsewhere in Chicago and its suburbs, as well as in California and Colorado; the site describes these programs and offers a number of additional web sites for further information.

Lastly, the web site features a rich array of practical examples of Great Books pedagogy and student performance via streaming videos and sample publications of student research and writing. We invite you to browse the site at your leisure, and we think you will find conclusive evidence of the power and effectiveness of Great Books-centered curricula for today's college students. We look forward to including your own contributions on the site in the future.