Deadline: 01-Oct-2024
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Education Programs is accepting applications for the Spotlight on Humanities in Higher Education program.
This program supports small projects that help students from underserved populations gain access to and benefit from the humanities. Projects must enhance the teaching and study of the humanities at one or more colleges and universities that enroll fewer than 10,000 undergraduate students and that belong to at least one of the following categories: community colleges, minority-serving institutions, rural colleges and universities, or colleges and universities with more than 40% of students receiving Pell grants. These institutions, nonprofit organizations, and state, local, or Native American Tribal governments aiming to advance the humanities at these institutions are eligible to apply.
Because humanities programs vary greatly among institutions, NEH encourages you to propose a project that fits your specific institutional needs. For example, you might use a Spotlight award to:
- develop new humanities courses, or enhance existing ones
- align humanities teaching with students’ career needs, create humanities-related opportunities to prepare students for the workforce, or help students understand how their humanities courses relate to their professional goals
- expand humanities curricula or integrate humanities learning into curricula outside humanities departments
- enrich students’ humanities experiences, such as through undergraduate research; hands-on, place-based, or experiential learning projects; campus-wide or community programs such as a “common read”; or student mentorship programs
- enhance faculty members’ ability to teach humanities concepts, such as through professional development workshops or shared reading programs
- facilitate collaboration among humanities faculty, including introducing faculty and/or students from partner institutions to humanities teaching practices at the host institution or organization, or working with academic departments, institutions, or nonprofit organizations to create shared resources
- develop community relationships, including partnerships with museums, libraries, or other nonprofit organizations to enhance the teaching and study of the humanities
Your project must focus on the humanities but may also include writing and composition, foreign languages, workforce development, and/or programs of study that lie outside traditional humanities disciplines.
Funding Information
- You may request up to $30,000 at the Exploration level and $60,000 at the Development level. This includes the sum of direct and indirect costs.
- NEH anticipates awarding approximately $1,000,000 among an estimated 25 recipients.
- You may request a period of performance up to one year at the Exploration level and up to two years at the Development level. Your project must start between June 1, 2025, and September 1, 2025.
Program Outcomes and Outputs
- The outcome of a Spotlight project will be planning for or advancement of a project that would significantly enrich humanities teaching and learning at colleges and universities.
- The output of an Exploration award should be a coherent plan for developing a curriculum, initiative, community or faculty partnership, or teaching resource that improves student understanding of and access to the humanities.
- The output of a Development award should be a curriculum, initiative, community or faculty partnership, or teaching resource that improves student understanding of and access to the humanities, with significant progress towards implementation.
- You will describe your project outcomes and outputs, and how they would support the overall purpose of the Spotlight program, in Attachment 1: Narrative. If you receive an award, NEH will assess your performance based on the outputs you identify in the proposal.
Eligibility Criteria
- To be eligible to apply, your organization must be established in the United States or its jurisdictions as one of the following:
- a nonprofit organization recognized as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code
- an accredited institution of higher education (public or nonprofit)
- a state or local government or one of their agencies
- a federally recognized Native American Tribal government
- If your institution is a college or university, the undergraduate enrollment must be less than 10,000. In addition, your institution must meet at least one of the following criteria. You must:
- be a community college
- be a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) as defined by the U.S. Department of Education. Eligible MSI categories include Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI); Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions (ANNH); Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI); Native American Serving Non-Tribal Institutions (NASNTI); Predominantly Black Institutions (PBI); Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU); and Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCU).
- have an enrollment of more than 40% Pell grant recipients. You may use either the percentage of full-time beginning undergraduate students or the percentage of all undergraduate students.
- be a rural college or university. You meet this criterion if your NCES locale classification (“campus setting”) is “rural,” “town: remote,” or “town: distant.”
- If your institution is a nonprofit or a state, local, or tribal government, you must include Attachment 2, explaining how you will partner with one or more eligible colleges or universities.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
