EXCO's Chapters

At EXCO, the Experimental College of the Twin Cities, everyone can teach or take classes and all classes are free. EXCOtc is a collective of Experimental Colleges in the Twin Cities that shares visions of a better world, offers free and open classes and is building a community around education for social change.

EXCO-TC is now made up of two chapters, the first chapter based out of Macalester (EXCO-Mac) that began in 2006 and a second one based out of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (EXCO-UMN) that began in 2008. We are excited to be developing chapters all over the Twin Cities and are open to many community groups starting chapters.

EXCO-UMN's blog is located here.

While we all share in the process of creating free and open classes, each chapter has its own unique identity, history, expression of its goals, and responds to the needs of the communities it serves. Please read on to learn about each EXCO.

EXCO-Mac

HISTORY
Begun in the Spring of 2006 by Macalester students as an alternative to the inequalities and injustices of higher education, EXCO strives to offer the Twin Cities communities the opportunity to teach or learn in a space open to alternative education and all kinds of knowledge, including and beyond academic knowledge. Everyone can teach or take a class, and all classes are free.

VISION
We believe education is a powerful tool for social change, one that can build equality and justice in our community when we value the knowledge of each and every person, particularly those whose voices have been historically marginalized.

GOALS

• To expand the definition of education
• To increase opportunities for lifelong teaching and learning
• To deepen and strengthen the connections between institutions of higher learning and Twin Cities communities
• To recognize education as a force to create equality and justice

EXCO-UMN

HISTORY
The EXCO of U of M began in the Fall of 2007 at the Twin Cities campus. EXCO was one of many movements started across campus in response to the AFSCME strike in September 2007, an event that served as a catalyst for re-thinking the U of M as a public, land-grant university.

MISSION
The Experimental College (EXCO) is an autonomous university that both envisions and enacts a “public” university by offering unique courses that are free and open to anyone.

EXCO seeks to embody the vision of a democratic university that serves the common good.

EXCO is committed to inclusion, community involvement, and progressive social change.

EXCO offers both a model of what the U might be, and a tool to make it so: EXCO is both an alternative university outside the U of M, and a subversive university that seeks to change the U of M from within.

EXCO is designed to both examine and overturn the alienation and exclusion created by the political hierarchy, bureaucracy, and neoliberalization of the university, by

CONNECTING:
--theory with praxis
--scholarship with activism
--campus with community
--workers, students, and faculty with each other
--the university communities with communities at large

And

CREATING:
A space where people come together to:
--share their talents in an inclusive, open, non-hierarchical, non-coercive setting
--become authentically involved in their education
--question, live, and transform their education
--build networks between and among groups
--build solidarity on campus to grow a public university
--organize for social change

EXCO COURSES:
--provide a large imaginative net to welcome any kind of content and form
--respond to community, campus, and public needs
--offer truly public access, involving university and non-university members not just as participants, but also facilitators and collaborators
--employ a variety of educational and pedagogical tools
--meet regularly as decided by those organizing them
--channel the U’s resources (classrooms and monies); use existing infrastructure

EXCO COURSES MAY:
--collaborate with other grassroots groups on campus
--carry out original research committed to social change
--arise from problems and material realities right here at the U, the community, or the world
--culminate in direct social action in response to problems and realities
--be taken for credit as part of Independent Study