HRAF Community College Initiative

The HRAF Community College Initiative recognizes the important role of community colleges in providing students with access to affordable opportunities for higher education. There are nearly 1,300 community colleges in the United States, serving more than 12 million students. According to the U.S. Department of Education, community colleges represent over 40 percent of undergraduate students enrolled in the United States and award over 800,000 associate degrees each year. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) states that “community colleges serve the majority of underrepresented students in the United States.” The HRAF Community College Initiative is focused on expanding our engagement with community colleges. 

Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges

HRAF is collaborating with the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC), a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), with instructors who teach anthropology at two-year and four-year colleges. HRAF and SACC are in alignment on the following principles:

• Supporting diversity and equity
• Learning from one another
• The practice of anthropology
• Advocating for students
• Sharing resources
• Best practices
• Connecting with students

Discounted Dues

HRAF is offering discounted annual dues for academic institutions that have faculty members affiliated with SACC. Here are the eligibility conditions:

• Discount only for community colleges with faculty members affiliated with SACC
• Discount only for new members of eHRAF World Cultures and/or eHRAF Archaeology
• Discount applied only to the first year of membership

If you are affiliated with SACC and interested in having institutional access to the eHRAF databases, we encourage you to speak with your college librarian and/or social sciences department chairperson. Please click here to initiate a free 60-day trial for your academic institution.

Teaching Anthropology

HRAF and SACC have a mutual interest in creating engaging teaching materials. HRAF has developed the eHRAF Workbooks which are suitable for introductory courses in cultural anthropology and archaeology. The current president of SACC, Professor Nikki Gorrell, integrates the eHRAF World Cultures database in her teaching. SACC plans to include Professor Gorrell’s eHRAF teaching activity in the next edition (expected 2027) of Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, a peer-reviewed open access textbook for cultural anthropology courses.

Presentation at the 2026 AAA Annual Meeting

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) will host their Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri from November 18–22, 2026. SACC will lead a session titled “Teaching Strategies Across the Five Fields” which will include a presentation by Matthew Longcore, Ph.D. titled “Teaching Anthropology with the eHRAF Databases.” Here is the abstract:

Teaching Anthropology with the eHRAF Databases
The Human Relations Area Files at Yale University is a membership-supported nonprofit organization committed to developing expertly curated and indexed databases. This session will be led by Matthew Longcore, Ph.D., the director of membership at HRAF and an anthropology instructor at the University of Connecticut. HRAF produces two online databases: eHRAF World Cultures (ethnography) and eHRAF Archaeology (prehistory). Combined, these collections represent the world’s largest anthropological databank. The eHRAF databases feature cultures and traditions from around the world, with ethnographic and archaeological data subject-indexed at the paragraph level. Our session will cover teaching anthropology with the eHRAF databases, including the eHRAF Workbooks which are designed to complement introductory courses in cultural anthropology and archaeology. The workbooks are presented as PowerPoint slideshows that instructors can modify to suit their own teaching styles, with activities based on searching or browsing in the eHRAF databases. Navigation instructions and links are provided for students to enter and explore the databases to complete the assignments. The workbooks feature a variety of activity formats including short answer questions and essay questions. Students are taught how to analyze and interpret ethnographic and archaeological data, looking for similarities and differences to make comparisons across cultures and traditions.

About HRAF

The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) is internationally recognized in the field of cultural anthropology. Founded in 1949 at Yale University, HRAF is a membership-supported nonprofit organization. Its mission is to promote understanding of cultural diversity and commonality in the past and present. To accomplish this mission, HRAF produces scholarly resources and infrastructure for research, teaching, and learning. HRAF supports and conducts original research on cross-cultural variation.

About SACC

The Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges (SACC) is a section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). SACC was founded in 1978 to promote excellence in the teaching of anthropology. SACC has published two open access textbooks, Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology and Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology. SACC is currently working on a new textbook, Traces: An Open Invitation to Archaeology.