Michael “Mike” Williams, education programs manager at the Center, has been named the 2019 recipient of the K–12 Distinguished Teaching Award by the National Council for Geographic Education.
For more than 40 years, the National Humanities Center has supported groundbreaking work and helped disseminate knowledge to all those who want to learn, think more deeply, and understand the world in new ways. Now, with the launch of a new, redesigned website which includes enhanced search features and curated collections, visitors can more easily explore the wealth of resources available from the Center.
The National Humanities Center has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of a summer institute for teachers on Southeast Asia in the mid-twentieth century and events surrounding the Vietnam War. Set to take place July 20–31, 2020, Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75 will involve thirty-six high school teachers selected from across the country who will spend two weeks at the Center working with scholars of Southeast Asia.
On October 12, 2019, National Humanities Center President and Director Robert D. Newman will be honored as a distinguished alumnus of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received his Ph.D. in English. This follows closely on the heels of another honor Newman received in April when he was the inaugural recipient of a distinguished alumnus award from the Humanities Institute at Penn State.
This summer the National Humanities Center is delighted to welcome fifty-nine PhD student participants for its graduate student summer residency program, Objects and Places in an Inquiry-Based Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities, July 15–26, 2019. Representing twenty-eight universities in eighteen states, these participants will work with leading scholars and educators from across the US as they learn how to add value to their research by focusing on teaching and learning.
The trustees and staff of the National Humanities Center mourn the passing of trustee emeritus Alan Brinkley, who died on June 17 at the age of 70 in New York, NY. Brinkley, the Allan Nevins Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, was a trustee of the Center from 2003–2013, serving as chairman from 2010–2013. Widely recognized as one of the leading historians of twentieth century American politics and culture, Brinkley’s scholarship primarily focused on the era of the Great Depression and World War II.
The National Humanities Center has announced the selection of twenty highly qualified educators from across the country as members of its 2019–20 Teacher Advisory Council. These teachers, from school districts in fourteen states, will work with the Center’s education program staff in piloting, evaluating, and promoting resources and programs that complement its nationally recognized teaching and professional development materials.
With the arrival of summer, the 2018–19 fellowship year has drawn to a close and the Center staff bids farewell to the remarkable scholars who have formed a close-knit community over the past nine months.
The trustees and staff of the National Humanities Center mourn the passing of trustee emeritus John P. Birkelund, who died on May 10 at the age of 88 in New Canaan, CT. Mr. Birkelund, the former chairman and CEO of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., was as a trustee of the Center from 1992–2004, serving as chairman from 1996–2004. His legacy at the Center continues in many ways, including through the Birkelund fellowship which he endowed.
The NHC has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a new project training educators with military backgrounds to use literature to improve their students’ and communities’ understanding of the experience of veterans and their families. The grant will help fund a weeklong institute at the Center for thirty educators from communities in North Carolina and Virginia. The participants will work with literary scholars during the institute to devise educational programs for their classrooms and communities to be implemented over the course of the following year.