ELKO - The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced recently $33 million in grants for 173 humanities projects, including $500,000 to Great Basin College for the establishment of a Virtual Humanities Center.
The grant project was a collaborative effort of the entire institution. Last fall, the opportunity was presented to the college. A group of faculty, staff and students met collaboratively over several weeks to design the project. The application was submitted, and notification of the award was announce by the NEH earlier this week.
The over-arching goal of the project is to broaden the education and skill-set of students, faculty and community members while fostering an appreciation of rural Nevada's complex cultural, historical and human geography.
The Virtual Humanities Center will consolidate and expand GBC's humanities programs, which currently exist in institutional "silos" and are thus underutilized. The college will create an interactive online portal, called "Humanities Crossroads", to provide access to humanities resources to students and community members throughout the college's 62,000 square mile service area. In addition, funding will allow for professional development of existing staff and faculty across all departments. The lion's share of the funding will be endowed to fund humanities programming at the college in perpetuity.
The objective will advance the college's long-term transformation to a learning community that openly appreciates the relevance of humanities content throughout its curriculum. The project will also provide the means for an annual "Humanities in Action" series, providing support for humanities events rotating among GBC's main campus and staffed centers in Battle Mountain, Ely, Pahrump and Winnemucca. In addition, programming will be archived using "lecture capture" technology and available through the Humanities Crossroads portal.
GBC is well placed to accomplish the project. Great Basin College Foundation has developed a fundraising plan that will leverage the NEH commitment, exceeding a required 2:1 match. The Foundation will raise $1.5 million in addition to the $500,000 grant, for a total of $2 million in funding for the project over the next five years.
The college anticipates its Virtual Humanities Center will emerge as a model for other colleges seeking to discover and celebrate regional cultures, maximize on limited budget resources and infuse work-force oriented programs with humanities content. The result will be graduates who are better prepared to enter the workforce and make broad contributions to their communities.
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