By Victoria Durgin, Digital Media Editor
Three Susquehanna faculty members were awarded $83,820 through a grant program from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The grant is in support of a project titled “Promoting Civil Discourse in a Polarizing Word.”
The project is directed by Betsy Verhoeven, the associated dean of the College of the Arts and Sciences and associate professor of creative writing and English.
According to Verhoeven, the project is meant primarily to engage students and faculty to encourage civil discourse both within and outside of Susquehanna.
“Our project will engage students and faculty in projects that allow them to build and practice meaningful dialogue despite political and social differences,” Verhoeven said in the information on the Susquehanna website about the project.
“These projects will have an outreach component designed to promote civil dialogue in the broader community,” Verhoeven continued.
Nicholas Clark, the department head of political science and director of public of policy is co-directing the project with Emma Fleck, associate professor of management.
According to the Susquehanna website, the project involves two years of curriculum development which will integrate rhetoric, political science and management.
The website describes why the three directors chose these specific fields of interest. Rhetoric will encourage students to make better arguments. Political science explains some aspects of partisanship and polarization and marketing analysis can explain how rhetoric impacts communication in the modern world, according to the Susquehanna website.
The project will also encourage Susquehanna faculty to conduct workshops with the faculty of other universities on interdisciplinary projects centered on the idea of citizenship skills.
The grant comes specifically from the NEH’s Humanities Connections Program.
According to the NEH’s website, the program “seeks to expand the role of the humanities in undergraduate education at two- and four-year colleges and universities,” through supporting projects that meet a set of criteria. Projects must include collaboration between faculty within different departments and include activities that foster student engagement.
Projects that fit these criteria, according to the site, include research projects and civic engagement.
The Humanities Connections program was founded in 2016 and offers funding of up to $100,000. It is one component of the endowment’s humanities-themed initiative which aims to “demonstrate and enhance the role and significance of the humanities and humanities scholarship in public life,” according the NEH’s website.
In 2018 the NEH awarded the grant to faculty at Colombia University. The project from Colombia focuses on medicine and literature in an interdisciplinary curriculum according to the university.
The NEH lists only two other projects as recipients of the grant, making Verhoeven, Clark and Fleck’s proposal the fourth to receive funding in the three years the program has existed.
The grant is for two years of curriculum development at Susquehanna and the project is expected to begin this fall.
NEH was created in 1965 to support research and learning in history, literature and philosophy among other areas in the humanities, according to Susquehanna’s website.
