TCC Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

Tacoma Community College (TCC) will receive a $174,812 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund humanities education. The “NEH CARES: Cultural Organizations” grant funds organizations that have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. TCC is one of 311 organizations that will be funded, out of 2,333 organizations that applied.

According to press release sent out by NEH today, the CARES Act Economic Stabilization grants will support essential operations at cultural organizations across the country. TCC plans to use the $174,812 it will receive to compensate up to 50 humanities faculty through the conversion of courses to an online format and the adoption of open educational resources (OER). Working with current e-learning expectations and best practices, TCC faculty will be working to provide quality and accessible digital humanities education experiences. Although this educational design work fills an immediate need for online education in the COVID-19 era, the courses built under this grant funding project will have a long life, serving TCC students for many years.

“The TCC Division of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences is happy to be able to take this summer to do thoughtful curriculum and course design work, so that our digital humanities presence is high quality, comprehensive, and can serve our community for a long future,” said Dr. John Falskow, Interim Dean of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at TCC. “This generous NEH grant will allow a large number of faculty, across a wide range of subject areas to invest time into thoughtful and meaningful digital humanities education. I am thrilled for the positive impact this will have on education and digital humanities in our community.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.