NEH Awards MC’s Global Humanities Institute Almost Half a Million Dollars

By David Karlsberg

Montgomery College was awarded $490,000 this semester by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Challenge Grant. This award will be used to fund the Global Humanities Institute (GHI) at Montgomery College.

How will this affect us as students of Montgomery College? Professor Rita Kranidis informed The Globe that the GHI will “help revitalize the humanities disciplines at MC.” It will help our faculty strengthen their knowledge of the importance of global issues to humanities, she said. This will allow the humanities disciplines to gain a “concentrated focus on cultural and global contexts,” Kranidis explained. As part of GHI, MC faculty will be traveling to many countries across the globe over the next five years, gaining knowledge to return to students, Kranidis said. In turn, MC’s first Humanities Day is being planned for October 2013.

MC Vice President and Germantown Provost, Dr. Sanjay Rai, has been a strong advocate for the significance of global contexts of education. Germantown Campus faculty who work closely with the GHI include Dean Joan Naake, Professors Azadeh Aalai, Christina Devlin, Lucy Laufe, John McLaughlin, Kelly Rudin, and many others. Drs. Rudin and Rai are also members of the GHI Internal Advisory Board.

This program will have a huge effect on MC that will last for a very long time, Kranidis said. So for those Humanities majors out there, get ready for a big shift for the better!