Humanities Initiatives at Community Colleges

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The humanities can play a vital role at community colleges by expanding students’ intellectual horizons and by increasing their capacity to read, write, and think analytically. By effecting these changes, the humanities can help prepare students for careers and for lives as engaged citizens. Humanities Initiatives at Community Colleges support community colleges’ commitment to educating students on a variety of educational and career paths. The program funds curricular and faculty development projects that help strengthen humanities programs and/or incorporate humanistic approaches in fields outside the humanities. Each project must be organized around a core topic or set of themes, drawn from subjects such as history, philosophy, and literature. Each project must also incorporate a broader institutional vision for the humanities at a community college. NEH Humanities Initiatives may • develop bridge programs for at-risk and nontraditional students; • integrate substantial humanities content or texts in required or developmental courses that focus on close reading, analytical writing, and/or effective speaking; • support new humanities programs (which may include but are not limited to new humanities minors, first-year seminars, and capstone courses) and enhance existing ones; • infuse humanistic learning into professional training (in such fields as business, law, engineering, technology, hospitality, and nursing and medicine); • create or improve curricular pathways towards graduation and/or transfer to four-year institutions; • create opportunities for faculty members to study together, in order to improve their capacity to teach the humanities; and • support collaborative projects in the humanities between the applicant institution and another institution, such as a college or university, a school or school system, a museum or library, or a historical or cultural society. Applicants are encouraged to draw on the knowledge of outside scholars who would contribute expertise and fresh insights to the project.

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