The Mellon Foundation’s Shared Experiences Blog has an interview with venture capitalist Scott Hartley on liberal arts education and new technology.

The American Council of Learned Societies invites applications for the ninth competition of the Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows program. In 2019, the program will place up to 21 recent PhDs from the humanities and humanistic social sciences in two-year positions at participating nonprofits and government agencies. This career-launching initiative aims to demonstrate that the capacities developed in the advanced study of the humanities have wide application beyond the academy. The fellowship carries a stipend of $68,000 per year, as well as individual health insurance, a relocation allowance, and up to $3,000 in professional development funds.

This year, Public Fellows have the opportunity to join one of the following organizations:

1. Alliance Theatre (Atlanta, GA) – Community Engagement & Audience Development Manager
2. American Public Media (St. Paul, MN) – Senior Research Analyst
3. Center for Court Innovation (New York, NY) – Communications Project Manager
4. Chicago Humanities Festival (Chicago, IL) – Program Manager
5. Citizens Committee for the Children of New York (New York, NY) – Policy & Budget Analyst
6. Committee to Protect Journalists (New York, NY) – Research Manager
7. Community Change (Washington, DC) – Policy Advisor
8. Data & Society Research Institute (New York, NY) – Editor
9. The German Marshall Fund of the United States (Washington, DC) – Program Officer
10. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Hartford, CT) – Grants Manager
11. Library of America (New York, NY) – Outreach Programs Manager
12. National Conference of State Legislatures (Denver, CO) – Legislative Policy Specialist
13. National Low Income Housing Coalition (Washington, DC) – Research Analyst
14. Natural Resources Defense Council (Washington, DC) – Campaign Advocate, Latin America Project
15. PEN America (New York, NY) – Festival Programs Manager
16. Public Books (New York, NY) – Associate Editor
17. Rare (Arlington, VA) – Community Engagement Manager
18. Reinvestment Fund (Philadelphia, PA) – Policy Analyst
19. Seattle Office for Civil Rights (Seattle, WA) – Senior Researcher
20. San Francisco Arts Commission (San Francisco, CA) – Community Impact Analyst
21. World Justice Project (Washington, DC) – Program Manager

Applicants to the Public Fellows program must have a PhD in the humanities or humanistic social sciences conferred between September 1, 2015 and June 21, 2019 and possess US citizenship or permanent resident status. Applicants must have defended and deposited their dissertations no later than April 5, 2019.

Further information about the application process and this year’s positions is available at www.acls.org/programs/publicfellowscomp/. Please do not contact any of the host organizations directly. All applications must be submitted through ACLS’s online application system (ofa.acls.org) by 9 pm EDT on March 13, 2019.

New England Humanities Consortium

Requests for Proposals

Guidelines and Application

NEHC Mission and Overview

The New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC) promotes and strengthens intellectual collaboration, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovative educational, intercultural, and curricular programming among New England Humanities centers and institutes, and the faculty, students, and regional, national, and global communities they serve. NEHC includes: Amherst College, Colby College, Dartmouth College, Northeastern University, Tufts University, the University of Connecticut, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Vermont, Wellesley College, and Wheaton College. The Humanities Institute of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut is the executive and administrative hub of the NEHC through 2020.

Award Description

The New England Humanities Consortium (NEHC) is offering competitive seed grants for research initiatives in the humanities that seek to capitalize on the collaborative network of the consortium. Awards of up to $9,500 will be made. (For projects whose budgets exceed $9500 applicants must list additional committed funding sources and amounts.)  Priority will be given to applications demonstrating concrete plans for consortium membership involvement. Such involvement can take different forms, but will typically involve, e.g. direct collaboration between two or more member institutions and/or active and solicitation of faculty, staff, or students exclusively from member institutions. Applications are welcome from individuals or teams, but the PI must be on the faculty of a NEHC member institution. Potential areas of funding interest include the following (this list is by no means exhaustive):

• Collaborative research projects
• Summer Seminars
• Study or Working groups
• Shared Speakers
• Collaborative course design
• Exhibitions

Please submit materials electronically in pdf or Word docx to YOUR HUMANITIES CENTER or INSTITUTE DIRECTOR BY MARCH 25, 2019. (They will then pass along the proposal to the NEHC board.)

Application Procedure and Timeline

Awards are made in April and October of each year.

Applying for the NEHC RFP requires the following:

1. Cover page (1 page) stating

• Title of the project
• Name, department/program/school location, and NEHC school representation of PI(s)
• Requested NEHC funding amount (Awards of up to $9500)

2. Project narrative (2 pages, single spaced, 1” margins, 12 pt font) detailing the

• Goals of the project
• How those goals address those of NEHC.
• Plans for involving NEHC member institutions and which institutions in particular will be involved
• How those goals will be pursued
• Names and roles of participants
• Expected outcomes and/or deliverables
• Plans for seeking external funding if any
• Project timeline describing completion of project goals and outcomes

3. CV (2 page) of Principal Investigator(s)
4. Budget and Award Period:

• Total budget.  (For projects whose budgets exceed $9500, please list additional committed funding sources and amounts, as indicated by an attached letter of support.)
• The award period will typically not exceed one (1) calendar year and should be stated in the application timeline.
• The awardees will be required to submit a detailed summary of the project at the end of their funding term.
• Please note in budgeting no indirects are permitted.

Reporting Requirements

All PIs will be required to submit a two-page report no more than (1) month after the end of the award period as specified in the award letter. The report should detail and substantiate progress on the following elements of the project:

• The extent to which project goals have been met
• Specific indicators or signs of success
• Outcomes and/or deliverables achieved
• Number of NEHC member institutions (and faculty/students) involved

Questions and requests for more information are encouraged and should be directed to uchi@uconn.edu.

Revised: 4/17/2019

Alexis Boylan, associate director of NEHC, has written a summary of NEHC’s first semester as an organization:

It has been an amazing first few months for NEHC. The Mellon Foundation allowed us to come out of the gate running with their generous award of $100,000. This funding supported two crucial pilot programs that kicked-off this fall. The first, is a program for schools to share visiting scholars. Our first speaker was Professor Kate Manne, who travelled from Amherst College to UConn, and finally Wellesley College for a week in early October. Her talks and presentations lit a fire across the three schools and proved the value of this kind of progressive intellectual exchange. Our next speaker will be Professor Mark Rifkin, coming the first week in March 2019. We are already working on plans to expand his voice beyond the three schools while he visits New England.

The second pilot program that kicked off this term is the Faculty of Color Working Group. This group will create outreach, mentoring, and support for the diverse faculty at NEHC schools. Organized and coordinated by Professor Melina Pappademos and Cathy Schlund-Vials the executive committee has met and a large conference is being planned for the Spring 2019. Stay-tuned for more on that event.

Finally, NEHC is planning to announce a call for proposals for its first round of seed-funded support grants for cross-NEHC collaborative projects. This is truly exciting for all of us as it marks another tangible move to creating strong and sustainable networks of scholarships across the region.

It has been a big year, and we are just getting started. Stayed tuned to our webpage, twitter, and facebook, for opportunities, news, and general humanities information. We are excited about the strength and voice we have together to promote humanities scholarship and activism.