New Washington Insider Series Focuses on Faculty Expertise

The first season of the video interviews will feature Washington College authors who contributed to a 2026 book detailing how fundamental information literacy skills can and should be taught to enable students’ lifelong civic engagement.

Professors are first and foremost mentors and educators, especially at a liberal arts school like Washington College that emphasizes innovative and impactful teaching. But professors play many other roles as well, conducting research, facilitating community collaborations, and producing creative work.  

Today the College is launching Washington Insider, a monthly video interview series featuring faculty members talking about their areas of expertise, their passion projects, and knowledge from their field that is particularly interesting or useful to people outside of it. 

For the 2026-27 academic year, the series will focus on conversations between two professors in each episode, all of whom contributed to Media and Information Literacy as Civic Practice, a book edited by Cromwell Center for Teaching and Learning co-directors Sara Clarke-De Reza and Meghan Grosse, professors of education and of communication and media studies, respectively. 

The book provides case studies based on courses taught at Washington College that can provide faculty at colleges and universities across the country with ideas for lessons, projects, and even entire semester-long courses that combine civic engagement with critical thinking skills. The videos throughout the year will pair writers of different chapters for conversations about where their disciplines and teaching practices overlap, how they see civic engagement as fitting into their field, and topics that join their expertise. 

The first episode features Grosse and Clarke-De Reza, who provide an overview for the idea of the book and set the stage for some of the professors who will be featured in future videos.  

“At the heart of it is our institution’s civic mission, which is old, as old as the United States itself," Clarke-De Reza said in the video. “To create ethical citizens, people who can shape and make democracy function and thrive, you need to prepare people who are scientists and artists and writers and critical thinkers and historians. That's what an ideally educated citizen looks like.” 

Future topics will include social justice and activism, campaigns and voting, AI use in education and business, and more. Check in every month on this YouTube playlist. 

“Talking together about how we layer in shared language across our disciplines, I think would be really productive for students and emphasize again the value of an interdisciplinary education,” Grosse said. “This is the work everyone needs to do. The moment calls for it. Our political moment calls for it. The social complexity calls for it.” 

— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven