Four-Year College

“Touchstones has helped me to become more self-aware and to challenge my beliefs and others’. I feel more confident participating in discussions of all kinds, while also actively listen to others and respond meaningfully.”

- StudentUniversity of Oklahoma

Small Group Work at Hampden-Sydney College.

Faced with the need to develop student skillsets and community-oriented social competencies, more than 78 colleges and universities have turned to Touchstones materials. Mapping the Future, New Landscapes, The Compass, and Touchstones Volume 1 and Volume 2 have served as invaluable resources in those efforts.

While Touchstones programs are introduced in everything from Freshman Seminar to leadership courses in Honors Colleges, they all yield crucial outcomes: students’ communication skills are significantly strengthened, and they form a more coherent and respectful community of learners.

At the Honors College of the University of Oklahoma, Mapping the Future helped develop collaborative leadership skills in a cadre of advanced students.

Malone University in Canton, Ohio, features New Landscapes in courses that help students’ cultivate their active listening skills, enabling them to appreciate the importance of diversity by exploring new perspectives.

For more than a decade, instructors at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, CA,—in general education courses and through programs run through the Hutchins Dialogue Center—have used The Compass, and Mapping the Future. These real-life approaches to building speaking, listening, and cooperation skills teach students what it looks and feels like to participate in seminars that include and respect all members of class.

Students at UMBC participate in a Touchstones discussion.

At University of Maryland, Baltimore County, (UMBC) Mapping the Future has been used as the central textbook for a required freshman humanities class. Students with diverse backgrounds and abilities work together in those classes to improve college their critical reading and communication, including their writing.