Division of Lifelong Learning
Division of Lifelong Learning:
NEH’s Division of Lifelong Learning provides humanities programming for the public as well as humanities programming geared towards the K-12 and postsecondary education sectors. The Division supports humanities projects in museums, historical and cultural organizations, libraries, K-12 classrooms, and colleges and universities, as well as for television, radio, and digital media. By developing quality humanities programs that foster public engagement in and appreciation for the humanities, the Division of Lifelong Learning delivers the best in the humanities for all Americans.
Public humanities projects enable millions of Americans to explore significant humanities works, ideas, and events. They offer new insights into familiar subjects and invite reflection upon important questions about human life. The division supports a wide range of public humanities programming that reaches large and diverse public audiences and make use of a variety of formats—interpretation at historic sites, television and radio productions, museum exhibitions, podcasts, short videos, digital games, websites, mobile apps, and other digital media. Examples of funded projects include Ken Burns’s Civil War documentary, which increased public understanding of a pivotal point in American history; the Walters Art Museum exhibition The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible, which gave visitors insights into the role of religion in the Middle Ages; and the reinterpretation of Historic Hudson Valley’s Phillipsburg Manor, an eighteenth-century New York mill site, through which visitors learn about the contributions of enslaved African Americans in the North, and Walden, a game, a free-to-educators digital game that allows players to spend a year at Walden Pond as Henry David Thoreau.
The division also supports humanities education through programs aimed primarily at program and curriculum development and through professional development opportunities for K-12 and higher education faculty. Intensive reading and discussion programs featuring recognized scholars bring together small communities of teachers at both the higher education and K-12 levels to investigate new themes and innovative approaches to humanities subjects. Largely residential and held during the summer, these programs encourage the study of common texts and other resources, include visits to collections in libraries and museums, and help faculty integrate what has been learned back into their classrooms. The division has several grant programs to support broad institutional efforts to enhance the humanities content of existing programs, develop new programs, or lay the foundation for more extensive endeavors. The division also supports creative, integrative, collaborative curricular projects at two- and four-year post-secondary institutions between the humanities, and STEM, pre-professional, and professional programs in law, the health sciences, etc.
Program officers are prepared to answer a wide variety of questions from prospective applicants. They can provide information about the division’s application guidelines and the eligibility or competitiveness of potential project ideas, and provide tips about common proposal-writing mistakes to avoid. They will supply samples of successful application narratives in each grant category and even provide feedback for a preliminary draft of a proposal if it is submitted well before the deadline. All potential applicants are encouraged to contact a program officer early in their project conceptualization process.
For a list of Lifelong Learning staff, click here.
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