The University of Illinois at Chicago has received two grants totaling nearly $1.9 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund expanded opportunity for undergraduate research in the humanities and to assist doctoral candidates in Latino humanities studies.

UIC Provost Susan Poser

As part of the Engaged Humanities Initiative, or EHI, the university will receive $1 million over four and a half years to teach and mentor undergraduate students to explore and conduct research in the humanities at UIC.

The initiative will be based in the UIC Institute for the Humanities where students who are part of EHI will have the opportunity to meet with mentors, attend lectures and workshops, and engage in professional development. UIC faculty will teach seminars that introduce students to the humanities and guide them in learning research methods and developing research topics. Faculty will also mentor students who are preparing for graduate school and other careers that will draw on their humanities education.

Because students attending UIC hail from such diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds, UIC Provost Susan Poser, who is also the principal investigator on the grant, expects that the topics they choose as research projects will reflect this diversity and expand the type and scope of research that students choose to pursue.

“This in turn will encourage faculty to explore how humanities education and pedagogy can adapt to become more connected to, and inclusive of, the lives of this generation of students. Long term, this program will help UIC become a model of humanities education for the 21st century,” said Poser.