The Marquette University Core of Common Studies has received the National Endowment for the Humanities Connections Planning Grant, Provost Daniel J. Myers announced today. The NEH is an independent federal agency and one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.
According to the NEH, the nearly $30,000, one-year grant will go toward supporting innovative curricular approaches within the Core that will foster productive partnerships among humanities faculty and their counterparts in the social and natural sciences and in pre-service or professional programs, such as business, engineering, health sciences, and other STEM disciplines. The NEH issued 23 such grants to two- and four-year institutions nationwide, totaling $1.3 million.
Specifically, the grant will fund a professional development institute to be held this summer that will help develop a powerful pedagogical experience for students, Provost Myers said. The grant also opens the opportunity for larger grant applications down the road, he added.
“This is a tremendous national recognition for Marquette University, and it is a testament to Dr. Sarah Feldner’s leadership and to the hard work of the faculty who put this proposal together,” Provost Myers said. “The Core of Common Studies is foundational to who we are as a Catholic, Jesuit university, and this grant will provide us with the resources necessary to continue innovating to ensure that our humanities and liberal arts curricula are relevant, rigorous and appropriately interconnected across the educational spectrum.”
President Michael R. Lovell and Provost Myers in May 2015 issued an official university-wide charge to revise and revitalize the Core of Common Studies in light of 21st-century pedagogical research and the university’s continuing commitment to Jesuit higher education. The three-year process, which was led by Feldner, associate professor and associate dean of graduate studies in the Diederich College of Communication, resulted in a revised Core that will be launched for all new students beginning in the fall of 2018.
According to Feldner, the revised Core is designed to prepare students to think about how ideas and disciplines are interconnected.
“This is a new way of thinking about how we teach,” she said. “Beyond thinking about just delivering content, classes will also lead instructors to think about how we help students to put ideas into a larger context.
“What’s so exciting about this grant is that it will allow us to bring faculty together to think about how to intentionally make these links with students. Faculty will be able to think about how course designs that helps students think about how concepts in one discipline are connected to others — all in service of tackling the complex issues that we face today.”
About the National Endowment for the Humanities
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.
Related content: News and updates from the Core of Common Studies Revision process