The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced on April 18, 2023 $35.63 million in grants for 258 humanities projects across the country. These grant awards support humanities exhibitions and documentaries, programs at colleges and universities, expanding access to historic collections, infrastructure projects, and scholarly research in the humanities.
NEH Humanities Connections Grants are designed to connect non-humanities fields to the humanities curriculum at two- and four-year institutions. There were 19 such grants awarded this year, totaling $1.46 million. Two NEH Grant awards were made in Rhode Island, including URI’s proposal was submitted by an interdisciplinary team consisting of IEP Executive Director Dr. Sigrid Berka, Dr. Bing Mu (assistant professor of Chinese/Intercultural Communicative Competence Coordinator, Department of Languages), Dr. Iñaki Pérez-Ibáñez (assistant professor of Spanish/Second Language Teaching Methodology), Dr. Megan Echevarría (professor of Spanish and film/media) and Dr. Vinka Craver (civil engineering professor/associate dean of research, College of Engineering).
Humanities Connections Implementation
Amount: $155,889 / Outright: $149,889
Project Title: A New Model for Integrated Humanities and Engineering Education
Project Description: Implementation of a two-year course revision and development project to expand the scope of the existing International Engineering Program
This NEH Connections Grant of $149,889 will seek to provide a foundational liberal arts experience to a broader range of URI undergraduate engineering students, while also increasing the impact of the IEP curriculum. First year student activities supported by this grant will include an EGR 105 lecture by the Tomaquag Museum’s executive director Lorén Spears on Indigenous thought and traditional ecological approaches to science/design and a Native American tool-making module in EGR 106. There will also be a guided nature walk at/around URI that will start from Keaney Gym, where ancestral Native American burial grounds are located, and will continue off campus to the Great Swamp area, blending local Native American history with ecological topics for first year students. Other activities sponsored by these funds will include the integration of films and narratives around global sustainability challenges into thematically interdependent third year civil engineering and SPA courses, the development of a new Grand Challenge intercultural competence course and joint engineering/language faculty seminars.
Encompassing a variety of topics, other grants awarded by NEH this year will underwrite a documentary on the life and legacy of African American intellectual W.E.B. DuBois; enable the digitization of the personal papers of former members of Congress for the American Congress Digital Archives Portal; and support restoration of the sick bay, post office, barber shop, and torpedo-handling spaces aboard the historic aircraft carrier the USS Intrepid to allow these areas to be reopened for public access.
“These 258 newly funded projects demonstrate the vitality of the humanities across our nation,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “NEH is proud to support exemplary education, preservation, media, research, and infrastructure projects that expand resources for Americans, support humanities programs and opportunities for underserved students and communities, and deepen our understanding of our history, culture, and society.”
This funding cycle includes the first round of awards made under NEH’s new Spotlight on Humanities in Higher Education grant program. Developed as part of the agency’s American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future initiative, Spotlight on Humanities in Higher Education supports humanities teaching and research projects that benefit underserved populations at small- to mid-sized colleges and universities.
This article was adapted from the original NEH press release that came out in April, including the photo.