Research and Assessment
One of the main objectives of the grant project was to research how engaged humanities curriculum, faculty development, and programming might help support UP faculty and students in the work they're already doing. To learn more about this, we undertook several assessment projects on campus and also researched national engaged humanities program models. Check out some of our work below!
Faculty Feedback: Focus Groups and Survey
One goal of the grant project was to learn more about opportunities and challenges within the new Core and how the engaged humanities might help address them. We hosted 2
faculty focus group discussions: one group of 21 that taught interdisciplinary exploration level Core classes during the 2022-2023 academic year and one group of 10 faculty that generally had an interest in teaching exploration level courses using engaged humanities approaches but had not yet designed such a course. In addition to discussion, we also asked participants to fill out
a brief survey designed to help us assess faculty needs and interests around interdisciplinary teaching and the engaged humanities. Later in the year, we hosted another pair of
focus group lunches, this time to learn more about how an Engaged Humanities Hub could help support UP humanities faculty.
Student Feedback: How Can the Engaged Humanities Serve UP Students?
While many humanities centers and hubs focus primarily on faculty and research, at UP we're especially interested in how a hub could support undergraduates; and what better way to find this out than to ask them directly? We hosted a
focus group lunch (12 participants) and publicized
a survey (29 participants) to gather the experiences and opinions of UP majors and minors from all humanities fields.
Model Program Research
With the help of our NEH grant Student Fellows, we researched 38 humanities program models (see full list here), collecting data with a tool that included questions on funding, staffing, founding, programming, theme, location, and mission statements. We also dug into program archives to learn about the work faculty and students achieved through these initiatives.
Check out the research tool we developed
