Mandel Humanities Chair To Discuss Future of Humanities at Community Colleges

Constance Kassor will be part of higher ed panel for Sept. 10 forum

HIGHLAND HILLS — What does the future of humanities education look like at two-year institutions? Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C®) Chair Contance Kassor, Ph.D., and others will lean into that question at an upcoming forum presented by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The forum, The Growing Role of the Humanities at Community Colleges, will take place virtually at 2 p.m. on Sept. 10.

Kassor is the chair of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center and the Mandel Scholars Academy at the Tri-C Eastern Campus. She and a panel of faculty members and college administrators will discuss the growth of humanities programs at community colleges and what it could mean for the future of higher education.

Student interest in the humanities declined by 24% in the decade after the Great Recession, as STEM fields saw growth, according to research cited on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website. But a counternarrative is emerging after a resurgence in the humanities at community colleges. In 2018, two-year institutions conferred 413,000 associate degrees in liberal arts and the humanities.

Kassor was appointed as the chair of the Mandel Humanities Center and Mandel Scholars Academy on March 31 after a national search. The Mandel Humanities Center was established in 2015 to advance humanistic inquiry in Northeast Ohio and develop civic-minded leaders who have thought broadly and deeply about the human experience.

Learn more about the event at chronicle.com.

August 27, 2025

MEDIA CONTACT: Anthony Moujaes, 216-987-3068 or anthony.moujaes@tri-c.edu