Overview
The LGBTQ+ Learning Collaborative is the first-of-its-kind honors education program that engages the expanse of high-impact practices designed to build a robust and knowledgeable community of scholars—including students, staff, and faculty—who understand and build a world based on inclusion of LGBTQ+ concerns and impacts.
The LC is an innovative initiative, working to build community through learning and engagement across the span of high-impact practices, including offering academic courses, research support, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, focusing on the needs, identities, and interactions of LGBTQ+ individuals and building a community of allies.
Mission
Since its inception, the Honors College has engaged in elevated, enhanced, and innovative undergraduate education. Our approach to living-learning and the whole student invokes the pursuit of interdisciplinarity, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, deep knowledge, and purposeful engagement both within and beyond Rutgers, through rigorous academic study and community service.
The LGBTQ+ Learning Collaborative is a marker of these efforts, built upon research that suggests that peer-to-peer relationships and direct student engagement in their learning overwhelmingly improves performance and retention, and develops deep intrinsic meaning.
This program is a comprehensive and intense project, building a community through learning, of LGBTQ+ individuals, allies, and supporters to amplify our commitment to equity and inclusion. Thus, it draws upon providing community-based educational support programs that delivers new benefits for a broad community—expanding understandings, growing knowledge—and most importantly, helping students achieve new levels of belonging, excellence, and success.
Benefactor
This program is made possible through the generous support of Dr. Jim Dougherty. Dr. Dougherty currently serves on the RU Board of Governors, has past board service across the University, and has been both an HC Convocation Distinguished Speaker (SP 23) and named, in honor of his mother and grandmother, the Dougherty Lounge on the second and third floors of the Honors College atrium.
LC Project Components
Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars:
The goal is to offer students a range of seminars that integrate or are focused on LGBTQ+ issues as they play out in our modern society. Through these seminars, students and faculty will explore how the lives and interests of LGBTQ+ community members and allies are intertwined with global, national, state, and local concerns across all disciplines and fields, including health care, economics, politics, social issues, religion, psychology, and culture & the arts.
Spring 2026: Dugan McGinley | Religion, “Queer Religiosities”; Brendon Votipka | Writing Program, “Writing Queer Drama”
Fall 2025: Alanna Beroiza | Writing Program, “Transgender Subjects and the Paradox of Virtual Representation”; Kirsten Springer | Sociology, “Health in the Crossfire: Medicine for Transgender Youth”.
Spring 2025: Douglas Cantor | Political Science, “Sex, Gender, and the US Constitution.”; Kristin Grogan | English, “Imagining Queer Communities.”
Fall 2024: Willow Tanner | English and Writing Program, “Metamorphoses: Body as Rupture and Disruption.”
Study Abroad / Travel-Study:
Site-based learning with an LGBTQ+ Focus.
- SU Global Study Abroad: The Honors College and the LC will partner with the USAC Program (one of the world's leading providers of study abroad) in Montevideo, Uruguay at the Universidad ORT, the nation's oldest, private university. Two Rutgers Honors College students will be awarded $3,500 to support their participation. See USAC Montevideo for more information and the application process, with a March 15 annual deadline.
- Alternative Breaks Program: Students and faculty will spend eight days / seven nights in New Orleans, LA with Project Lazarus. The mission of Project Lazarus is to help heal and empower people living with HIV/AIDS by focusing on wellness, providing housing, and offering important support services. The LC will pay the full costs of the program for up to 10 participants, each year.
- Local Travel Study Program:Identify and support student and faculty outreach across the NJ-PA-DE-NY region where a host of opportunities for students to engage in and learn more through site visits, attending performances, engaging with community centers and advocacy groups, and getting involved in both corporate and public arenas that involve LGBTQ+ issues exists.
Dougherty Research Scholars:
Established as a formal research scholars’ program of the Honors College, the DRS program will sponsor between two and four rising Junior or Senior students who will undertake SU research related to their major and/or Capstone projects with an LGBTQ+ topic or significant focus. Open to Honors students in any field, students must have research mentor and a clearly articulated and designed project. DRS are selected through a competitive application process and awarded up to $3,000.
Scholar-in-Residence:
In the 2026-2027 AY the LC will issue an invitation for a short-term Scholar-in-Residence to lead the LC and the entire Honors College in an exploration of the interdisciplinary dimensions of the future of LGBTQ+ rights, studies, public affairs, healthcare, legal affairs, and social/cultural advances.
Co-Curricular Opportunities:
Events that will focus on leadership and professional development through the lens of the needs of the LGBTQ+ honors community and those who support and sustain the community from the outside. These include workshops, speakers, social meetings, community partner activities, service projects, advocacy outreach, and teach-ins.
Common Reading and Annual Lecture/Talk:
In partnership with numerous campus entities, we will select a common reading, each year, for the support and enrichment of the LC's work, to be read and shared among the entire community. The author of the work (fiction or non-fiction, in rotation) will be invited to campus for a series of lectures, class sessions, and small-group interactions. The LC will provide up to 100 copies of the book, for free, to students, faculty, and staff, who agree to participate.
Mentoring and Networking:
Establish and sustain HC alumni group of LGBTQ+ individuals, allies, and interested parties, to connect through various events and stages of a student's educational and professional development, so that they can see how the issues and topics are handled in post-graduate and post-educational settings and broader communities.
Internships and Externships:
Develop and grow a list of LGBTQ+ led or supportive companies and non-discriminatory organizations that host equitable and inclusive opportunities, and support our student members through assistance and participation in these opportunities throughout the state and nation.
Social and Community Programming:
Students, faculty and staff gather for events focused on advocacy, community building, support, entertainment, fun, social interaction, the outdoors, cultural advancement, and more.
Upcoming Events
LGTBQ+ Learning Collaborative
Coming Out Launch Party
Friday, January 24 | 4-6PM
Honors College, Druskin Lounge
Keynote Speaker: Ms. Jane Clementi, co-founder and director of the Tyler Clementi Foundation
Additional Remarks: Drs. James Dougherty, J.D. Bowers, and Kristen Springer
An LGBTQ+ LC Activities Panel will provide brief overviews of each of the major facets of the Learning Collaborative, including classes, co-curricular workshops, social events, research assistance, study abroad programs, and more.
Questions
If you have any questions, or seek to get involved with the LC, please contact the Honors College.
