The development of curriculum integrating applied ethics study into a criminal justice major.

Criminal justice professionals face serious problems and controversies on a daily basis that require not only subject matter expertise in criminal justice, but also the broad set of skills cultivated by the humanities and ethical philosophy. To address timely societal issues of critical importance and to better prepare the next generation of criminal justice professionals, Medaille College proposes Applied Ethics in Criminal Justice, a three-year implementation project to pilot a model for integrating the humanities discipline of philosophy in deep ways into the social sciences in undergraduate education. This interdisciplinary project involves faculty members from Medaille’s Departments of Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies, and it will include creating one new course, revising two existing courses, linking two courses in a learning community, and incorporating experiential learning into students’ coursework.

Creation of a general education course, three freshman research seminars, and an interactive app that focus on physical material from the multiple perspectives of science and humanities disciplines.

Materials Matter is a collaborative project of colleagues in Classical and Near Eastern Studies, Art and Design, Art History, Physics, Materials Science and Engineering, and Binghamton University’s Undergraduate Research Center, along with partners at the Corning Museum of Glass. We propose to reposition the humanities within the curriculum by teaching emerging research in the humanities to STEM students and, reciprocally, the latest science to humanities students. We will expand upon a pilot course to scale out in two directions: intensive freshmen research seminars and a general education course. Both will focus on materials, like glass or pigments, and explore the relationship between chemical elements and culture using humanities research methodologies alongside quantitative scientific methods, integrated through a coherent visual design and interactive app. A museum exhibition and summer research scholarship will present further opportunities for engagement.

The development of interdisciplinary curriculum integrating business and labor history into professional art and design study.

Through a partnership among History faculty, and Art and Design faculty, "Teaching Business and Labor History to Art and Design Students" will develop curricula intended to educate students about the business and labor history of the art and design professions. Content will explore how this history impacts present-day industry, careers and professional decision-making. Key project elements will include Art-and-Design faculty professional development conducted by History professors; collaborative curricular development; two conferences; and the creation of a resource website. The initiative addresses an expressed need from Art-and-Design faculty and students for a more complete understanding of the historical influences that have shaped art- and design-business management, the creative process, technology and production. The initiative will help ensure that Art and Design students are well-equipped for the professional demands of the 21st Century.

An undergraduate certificate in the study of Veterans, Society, and Service.

Arizona State University will offer an inaugural certificate in the study of Veterans, Society, and Service. Housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the undergraduate certificate will focus on Veterans as part of and reflections of society, but also apart from society during their service and transition back to civilian life; it will contribute to both studying and diminishing the gap between military and civilian cultures; finally, the certificate will explore what civilian society and Veterans can learn from one another about the nature of national service. This innovative program is based on socially and academically responsible interdisciplinary scholarship combining history, literature, ethics, psychology, sociology, and understanding the arts. The implementation grant will position ASU to go beyond the “Veteran Friendly” moniker at universities to seed further civilian-military engagement and build academic weight to the study of Veterans in an international context.

Creation of a new interdisciplinary minor, Ancient Practices.

The proposers, an interdisciplinary team of humanists and STEM faculty, will create a new interdisciplinary minor called Ancient Practices designed to attract and engage STEM and other non-humanities undergraduates. This unique degree opportunity is built around the concept of integrating both humanities and STEM content into studies of the ancient world. The combination of these disciplines allows content dealing with classical and other ancient civilizations to be presented in the context of the core interests of other-than-humanities majors. This has been found to be an effective strategy for attracting these students into classes dealing with content that has been at foundation of studies of the humanities for centuries. This allows facility to engage students that might not otherwise be drawn to these classes and to instill in them the skills and habits of mind associated with humanistic studies.

Implementation of a new general education pathway in the Honors College that would integrate the humanities into the institution’s medical and global programs.

The Honors College at the University of South Florida proposes to develop ten new, and seven revised, interdisciplinary courses as part of a new program entitled “Medical Humanities in a Global Context.” These integrated interdisciplinary courses will offer students a pathway through the USF Honors College curriculum and aims to cultivate more critical, holistic, and experiential perspectives on health and human experience.

A three-year interdisciplinary curricular implementation grant focused on the life, works, and legacy of writer Paul Laurence Dunbar.

The University of Dayton and partners seek support from NEH to develop new curriculum and place-based experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate students from all backgrounds around the theme of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the Dayton native and preeminent African American writer. We will develop of a set of linked courses that can explore the breadth of Dunbar’s life, context, works, and influence. These include courses from multiple fields that will incorporate significant humanities subject material, pedagogy, and habits of inquiry, as well as humanities courses that will integrate other disciplines. UD will introduce digital humanities tools and methods of inquiry to students and educators as a means of broadening engagement with the humanities. The project will also develop new experiential learning opportunities that make use of extant, but hard-to-discover Dunbar sources and artifacts, and create connections with the places associated with his life and works.

A two-year interdisciplinary curricular project to implement an experiential place-based curriculum in the applied humanities, including historic preservation and human-centered land use.

We propose a two-semester, experiential undergraduate curriculum designed to introduce students to a wide range of careers in applied Humanities. Using Vanderbilt University’s historic Vaughn Home (1875) as a “lab,” students will gain hands-on experience with archival and archeological research, historic reservation, museum curation, human-centered land use and design, digital humanities, and public affairs. This proposal is submitted jointly by faculty in Anthropology, Engineering, Managerial Studies, English, and History in full partnership with administrative staff from the Division of Administration, the Division of Communications, University Archives/Special Collections, the Center for Digital Humanities, and the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University.

The implementation of an interdisciplinary major in health humanities for undergraduates.

D’Youville College (DYC) proposes to implement an interdisciplinary major in Health Humanities by creating six core courses with robust experiential-learning components. DYC created the major, which stems from a new general-education curriculum and a piloted series of topics courses, to strengthen the humanities by means of interdisciplinary programs. The major responds to the College’s belief that, to serve their communities most effectively, healthcare providers must have a firm understanding of how and why different belief systems, cultural biases, ethnic origins, family structures, and other culturally determined factors influence how people experience illness. It also responds to DYC’s mission and its position as an important provider of healthcare professionals in a highly diverse city with a focus on healthcare. As part of implementing the new major, DYU will launch a speaker series and faculty workshops and significantly enhance its collaboration with community organizations.

The implementation of an interdisciplinary medical humanities minor for undergraduates.

This proposal aims to implement a collaborative, cross-campus Medical Humanities Minor at Georgetown and to expand the Medical Humanities Initiative (funded by a NEH Humanities Connections Planning Grant). Funded outcomes will be an interdisciplinary Medical Humanities undergraduate minor featuring Main/Medical faculty team-taught courses, experiential learning, and researched Capstone, as well as a cross-campus Medical Humanities Program with Student Research Fellowships, Medical Humanities Colloquium (open to the public), open-access Medical Humanities digital platform, and an international Medical Humanities Symposium. We aim to cultivate meaningful partnerships across campuses, equip students with a breadth of humanistic tools, contribute to scholarship in the field of medical humanities, enhance the well-being of pre-health students, and change the patient/clinician encounter from a grassroots level, by shaping the training of health care professionals at a critical stage.

A three-year project to implement a general education pathway introducing underserved students to digital community engagement.

The Community-Oriented Digital Engagement Scholars (CODES) program will provide a general education track for underserved students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and Lewis and Clark Community College (L&C). Blending community engagement, digital methods, collaborative research, and transdisciplinary pedagogy, CODES enables students to bring their experiences and creativity to bear upon critical issues facing their communities. Designed for underserved students, including those who are first-generation, African American, Latinx, and/or Pell-eligible, CODES help students at the earliest stages of their college career understand the integral role of the humanities in transdisciplinary problem solving. While there are several models of community-engaged teaching at the general education level, few meaningfully incorporate digital methods and ethics into pedagogical design to address the need for an informed twenty-first century citizenry and workforce.

The development of an interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

This proposal aims to foster a transdisciplinary environment where humanities and STEM students can think critically, engage, and interact with technical and social constructions of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and systems. This grant will support the design of an undergraduate certificate program entitled “Intelligent Media and Society” at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University. This certificate will focus on humanistic and socio-cultural engagement with AI with a core set of classes with complementary domain knowledge including Minds and Machines; Science Fiction, Creativity and Responsibility; and Algorithmic Reading. Implementation of this certificate program includes curriculum building, development of online modules, and community/partnership development for experiential learning opportunities.

The development of an interdisciplinary minor in digital and public humanities.

Through this grant, Saint Mary’s College will launch an integrated, 15-credit Digital and Public Humanities (DPH) minor that includes two required courses, six electives, and four elective modules. The minor will integrate project-based, experiential learning opportunities with internal and external partners, providing students with a hands-on model of how humanities research engages with and influences the world. The DPH minor will be the first at Saint Mary's College to integrate technology fields with the humanities in a formal curricular path. The minor also uses a new curricular format for interdisciplinary programs by creating module courses that enable students to develop competencies in data management, text mining, ethics, and project management in a focused, flexible format.

A three-year project to implement a “Technology and Human Values” certificate.

Contemporary advances in technology promise benefits for humanity across a seemingly limitless range of applications; they also pose serious challenges to our efforts to promote human flourishing and even to our understanding of what it means to be human. We interact with technologies that track our movements, map our faces, predict our choices. Tomorrow’s professionals must grasp not only the technical aspects of such tools, but also the implications these tools have for humanity. Newman University’s ETHV certificate program addresses these issues by making intentional connections between the humanities and the professional fields which deploy these new and emerging technologies. The ETHV purposefully integrates humanities content from our general education program into the degree requirements of professional majors. Our project implements ETHV certificate tracks for majors in criminal justice, business data analytics, biology, psychology, education, and social work.

A three-year project incorporating humanities content into preprofessional courses.

Community colleges have come to be regarded as workforce development institutions and only secondarily as what they really are: important components of the higher education landscape. At the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), we believe the humanities are vital for teaching us how to be fully human within our era. Through the Contextualizing Humanities Education for All program, our team will infuse humanities ideas into non-humanities disciplines through faculty collaboration on cross-curriculum development, and workshops to introduce students to skills in written and oral communication, analytical thinking, collaboration, creative thinking, and problem-solving. Humanities and non-humanities faculty will collaborate to design a variety of paired courses, programs, and a Distinction in Humanities recognition to provide multiple touch points for exposing students to humanities concepts and helping them apply this mindset to the rest of their education and life.

The development of an interdisciplinary digital humanities undergraduate research track whose courses would feature community-engaged experiential learning.

The project team for “Digital Fluency and Experiential Learning: Promoting Digital Humanities in Undergraduate Research” will create a Digital Humanities Undergraduate Research (DHUR) track for UNC Asheville’s Undergraduate Research Program. DHUR courses will engage students in digital humanities through experiential learning and undergraduate research activities. The grant will facilitate faculty development efforts in order to increase the number of courses that employ humanistic inquiry and digital tools and to adapt and pilot courses for the DHUR track. These courses will incorporate practices such as community engagement, archival research, story mapping, oral history collection, and other forms of experiential learning. Students in DHUR courses will contribute to the crafting and dissemination of an inclusive online museum housing archival materials and interactive projects that illuminate the experiences of historically excluded people in Asheville and its environs.

The development of eight new courses integrating humanities and data science through experiential learning.

We propose to expand the role of the humanities at the University of Colorado Boulder by developing a curricular initiative that combines the humanities and data science. Team members will design eight courses, each of which will promote experiential learning and foster engagement with humanistic questions in the context of quantitative inquiry. Key components of the project include, first, a two-year course design and development workshop facilitated by CU Boulder’s Center for Teaching and Learning. Second, we describe an ambitious plan for disseminating our findings and for fostering local and national conversations about best practices for teaching data science and the humanities. Our project aims to provide a model of cutting-edge pedagogical collaboration and an example of how the humanities can help equip twenty-first century learners with the intellectual resources they will need responsibly to inhabit a world being remade by data.

A three-year project to launch a minor in Vincentian social justice

Niagara University in Lewiston, NY, a liberal arts university in the Vincentian and Catholic traditions, requests a three-year implementation grant to launch a new Vincentian Social Justice General Education Minor (VSJ minor) that will provide Niagara’s undergraduates with choice and flexibility to integrate humanities-focused social justice courses, content, and experiential learning into their major area of study. By the end of the grant period, Niagara’s goal is to have 25 new or revised courses for the VSJ minor that serves 500 students annually (regardless of enrollment in minor), and then 10 students enrolled in the minor by the third year. Furthermore, implementation of the minor will include 30 faculty across 19 disciplines, including eight in the humanities.

Implementation of a two-year course revision and development project to expand the scope of the existing International Engineering Program

The proposal introduces an integration of several courses between engineering and foreign languages as well as cultural studies, and proposes to create two new courses, one on intercultural competence and one in exploring science through literature and film, as well as implementing experiential learning opportunities for engineering and language students in RI diverse and Indigenous communities.

Implementation of a three-year curricular revision project to develop an interdisciplinary and experiential model for the general education curriculum

In this Implementation Grant, the Loyola University Chicago team proposes to build off their pilot work—a set of co-taught Biology/Philosophy courses—to recruit and train additional faculty across STEM and humanities departments to develop at least four new interdisciplinary courses/course sets for Loyola undergraduate students.

A three-year initiative to develop new curricular pathways emphasizing the “engaged humanities,” which will be open to all students at the University of Portland.

“Hub, Pathway, Core” will implement two interdependent initiatives at UP: a) an Engaged Humanities Pathway linked to the newly revitalized Core curriculum; and b) an Engaged Humanities Hub to provide ongoing support for the Pathway and related programming. The project will assemble interdisciplinary working groups in civic humanities, environmental humanities, and health humanities to develop Engaged Humanities Core courses open to all UP students; create a Pathway for students to follow through engaged humanities framing courses, Core Exploration courses, and high-impact experiences; and formalize an Engaged Humanities Hub to feed and sustain engaged humanities curriculum and programming. Together these initiatives will expand the role of the humanities in undergraduate education at UP and will connect college learning to students’ professional and personal futures.

A three-year project to develop and implement two new interdisciplinary undergraduate degree programs in the new Society, Environment, and Health Equity (SEHE) department: a BA in Environmental Studies and a BA in Global and Community Health. 

The Department of Society, Environment and Health Equity (SEHE) will establish two undergraduate majors and minors at the University of California, Riverside: a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a B.A. in Global and Community Health. These majors will offer students the opportunity to study social inequities, health, and sustainability - issues that deeply matter to them - in theoretically grounded scholarly literature that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Our students will gain methodological tools to grasp dynamic interactions of social, economic and political inequities, environmental toxicity and climate-related crises, health, disability and disease. They will be exposed to community-engaged approaches that prepare them to create and share evidence-based solutions to these inequities. The new degrees will train students for socially relevant careers in areas of high employment demand, and will serve community needs of the Inland Southern California region and beyond.

A three-year project to expand an environmental studies minor into a major.

Despite an abundant understanding of the scientific basis of many of today’s pressing environmental issues, promising scientific and technical innovations struggle to be implemented in particular social, cultural, and political contexts. Scientists and policy makers need the aid of knowledge generated in the humanities to translate their research into meaningful societal interventions. We propose to implement a place-based, humanities-informed Environmental Studies major at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga that will offer a formal framework for exploring and advancing the humanistic side of environmental issues in a region steeped with a rich and complex environmental and social history. This program of study will provide new learning opportunities for students, synthesize existing strengths of and create new scholarly activities for UTC faculty across disciplines, and foster community partnerships that support UTC’s mission of being an engaged metropolitan university.

A three-year project to establish a minor in health humanities within the College of Humanities and Sciences.

Humanities and Arts faculty and health professionals at VCU will collaborate to create a Health Humanities Minor to bridge gaps between humanistic studies and professional fields, teach students critical frameworks to better understand inequities, and help them develop empathy and observational or clinical skills informed by multidisciplinary cultural-historical, social, political, ethical, and aesthetic perspectives. We will develop a cross-disciplinary team-taught curriculum with ten new and revised Health Humanities courses, including a core Health Humanities course specifically tailored to our institution and students. It will focus on: 1. ethics/social inequities; 2. art, historical, or cultural/literary perspectives to immerse students in multiple modes of humanistic analysis, enable them to apply interdisciplinary connections within and beyond this program, and adapt coursework toward their career goals; and 3. community-based experiential learning.