BY Dixita Limbachia

Staff Writer

A $4.2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will aid two of the University’s Humanities Without Walls initiatives and help graduate students further their studies.EJ

The research initiative, Work of the Humanities and the Changing Climate, is designed to be comprehensive and offer scholars multiple opportunities to have research projects funded.EJ

The second initiative, a predoctoral workshop, gives graduate students who have not completed their degrees a chance to partake in a summer workshop in Chicago for three weeks.EJ This helps students capitalize on their areas of study — English, history, art history, philosophy and other humanities. The workshop also teaches students new skills and gives them contacts and networking opportunities in their field.EJ

Humanities Without Walls is a 15-partner organization that involves many Big Ten universities.EJ Collaboration across the 15 institutions is key to the program. The program requires each institution to send two graduate students to the workshop and a minimum of three collaborative partners for each research grant.EJ The workshop emphasizes humanities in a changing world and encourages students to experiment with collaboration.EJ

“The work of the Humanities Without Walls consortium represents an unusually innovative and potentially transformative new model for graduate education,” said Eugene Tobin, a senior program officer at the Mellon Foundation. “By focusing on such ‘grand challenge’ questions as climate change, migration, and racial, ethnic, and class conflict, faculty and graduate students at 15 Midwestern research universities are demonstrating the powerful combination of scholarly knowledge and public engagement.”EJ

The Mellon Foundation is no stranger to the University, as various departments have received grants over past three decades. But the recent award is the largest grant the University has received and is estimated to fund research and workshops into 2019.EJ

Antoinette Burton, interim director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, said the grant creates security for the next three years.EJ

“It’s a great feather in the cap of the University of Illinois to have been the lead in developing the grant proposal and receiving the money from Mellon,” Burton said. “These are very difficult financial times across the country and the idea that for the next three years so many will have access to this funding to pursue their research is pretty good timing.”

Janelle Weatherford, director of the office of Foundation Relations for the Mellon Foundation, is excited that the University is pushing the envelope with this undertaking.EJ

“This is an exciting endeavor, the consortium, because it allows the University of Illinois to extend its reach through the Illinois Program for research in the Humanities area,” she said. “It’s really helped put our institution on the maps in terms of what is possible.”

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