In 2016, the National Endowment for the Humanities created a new program to support curricular innovation at colleges and universities. The NEH Humanities Connections grant program seeks to expand the role of the humanities in undergraduate education through support for innovative curricular approaches that foster productive partnerships among humanities faculty and their counterparts in the social and natural sciences and in pre-service or professional programs.

Humanities Connections projects have four core features:

• integration of the subject matter, perspectives, and goals of two or more disciplines, including both humanities and non-humanities fields;
• collaboration between faculty from two or more separate departments or schools;
• experiential learning as an intrinsic part of the curricular plan; and
• long-term institutional support for the proposed curriculum innovations.

This roundtable session will feature three grantees from the program’s inaugural competition who will discuss the promise and challenges of their Humanities Connections projects, touching on their experiences fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and developing meaningful experiential learning opportunities.

The NEH-funded projects at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Fontbonne University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute have spurred historians and their colleagues to rethink the ways that students encounter and practice the humanities – and history specifically – in the undergraduate curriculum.