"NEH Announces $17.6 Million in New Grants"
1999-08-06 until 1999-08-06
National Endowment for Humanities
Washington, DC, USA United States of America

William R. Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), announced 163 grants totaling $17.6 million. The National Endowment for the Humanities is helping to bring exciting programs, technology and storytelling into the nation's classrooms, living rooms and communities, said Chairman Ferris. This summer's grants offer fine examples in each of those areas, including Schools for a New Millennium, documentary films, museum exhibitions, literacy programs and family-history activities. These projects will bring the many voices of the nation's past into the hearts and minds of millions of Americans of all ages.

Among the grants awarded this round are 14 Schools for a New Millennium grants, which enable selected schools to weave computer use into their humanities curriculum and become models for how to use computer technology in day-to-day teaching. These grants are part of NEH's contribution to its new partnership with America's Promise: The Alliance for Youth, a nonprofit organization chaired by General Colin Powell. The NEH-America's Promise partnership is a joint effort to commit resources addressing educational and other needs of the nation's young people. Other important projects receiving funding are: literacy projects, including a national project by Raleigh, N.C.'s Motheread, Inc. to incorporate Latino history and literary traditions, and national expansion of Louisiana's Prime Time-Family Reading Project, which helps newly literate parents and children bond through reading and discussion of themes such as courage, greed and fairness; museum exhibitions on George Washington, the rise of the New South, the history of migrant farm-labor, and technology in the 20th century. National Public Radio series, marking the celebration of the millennium, on how recorded sounds have shaped 20th-century American culture and can help envision the nation's future; film documentaries on Woodrow Wilson, Ulysses S. Grant, Zora Neale Hurston, George Wallace, Ralph Ellison, China's Cultural Revolution, and the rise of modern cardiovascular surgery based on a Depression-era intellectual partnership between a black lab technician and a white surgeon; and family history project at Mesa College, a community college in San Diego, that will gather family photographs from area residents, exhibit the photographs and hold discussions on how the local photos relate to national historical events and traditions. (NEH will launch a national family history initiative called My History is America's History later this fall.) Programs and number of projects funded this round are: Public programs (76) ($10,467,000) film documentaries (27) ($5,298,000) museum exhibitions (32) ($3,110,000) library programs and special projects (12) ($1,769,000) radio programs (5) ($290,000) Education programs (87) ($7,179,000) K-12 education summer programs for schoolteachers (27) ($3,305,000) Schools for a New Millennium (using computers to enhance K-12 learning) (14) ($439,600) K-12 curriculum development (8) ($194,400) Higher education summer programs for higher education faculty (22) ($2,825,000) higher education curriculum development (12) ($295,000) faculty graduate study at historically black colleges (4) ($120,000) NEH grants are awarded on a competitive basis. Throughout the year, humanities experts outside of the Endowment assess all applications and judge the quality and significance of each proposed project.

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