The Teagle Foundation, through the Cornerstone: Learning for Living Program, has awarded the Core Humanities (CH) Program at the University of Nevada, Reno, a Recognition Grant of $50,000 to support a year-long initiative to revitalize the Program’s curriculum for the future. In CH courses, students explore questions about history, the world and their place in both by engaging with works of art, history, philosophy and literature. With the generous support of the Teagle Foundation’s grant, faculty from the departments of English, history, philosophy and world languages and literatures are developing new course materials this year that will enable instructors to revitalize their approach to CH courses. 

“We are eager to rethink what required interdisciplinary humanities courses can provide students in the twenty-first century,” said Daniel Ryan Morse, associate professor of English and Co-PI on the grant. “And we believe that the University of Nevada, Reno, a public, land-grant university with an established commitment to such courses, constitutes an ideal laboratory for innovation. The humanities have always been central to the well-rounded education that the University provides.”

In CH courses, students tackle big questions about the world and themselves by engaging with works of art, philosophy and literature. In so doing, students in CH courses build analytical and communication skills while also developing as responsible, informed citizens.

“At more elite public and private universities, it's taken for granted that CH-like courses comprise an essential component of a student’s education, but we believe that University students no less deserve to ask big questions and to discuss transformative texts in their search for answers,” said Sean O’Neil, assistant director of the Core Humanities Program and Co-PI on the grant. “We are grateful to the Teagle Foundation for supporting our work to make interdisciplinary humanities courses available to all students, regardless of their income level or background.” 

The grant-funded initiative includes two day-long workshops (one in each of the fall and spring semesters) during which Core Humanities faculty will discuss the goals of the Program’s two-course sequence, CH 201 and CH 202, and choose texts that help students best achieve these goals. In between the two workshops, faculty will gather instructional materials and resources that enable other faculty teaching in CH to revitalize their courses by adopting new texts or new approaches to their own courses. The grant also funds work to develop a more robust training program for new graduate student teaching assistants, many of whom might be new to running discussion-based courses like those offered in CH.

Faculty within the University's College of Liberal Arts established what would become the Core Humanities Program in 1988, and it has gone on to win multiple awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as Nevada Humanities. Faculty participating in this grant-funded project include: Katherine Fusco (chair, Department of English), Ned Schoolman (chair, Department of History), James McSpadden and Jennifer Ng (Department of History), Nasia Anam, Chris Mays, John Higgins, James Mardock and Daniel Morse (Department of English), Ravi Thakral (Department of Philosophy), Erica Westhoff (Department of World Languages and Literatures) and Sean O’Neil (Core Humanities Program).