National Endowment for the Humanities Leaders Visit USU

LOGAN — Utah State University was recently honored with a special visit from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

On Jan. 19, NEH Chair Shelly Lowe and Senior Deputy Chair Anthony Mitchell gathered with recent recipients and related stakeholders at USU’s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA).

The impromptu visit was part of a larger stopover in the state and organized, in part, by Utah Humanities, which recommended a stop in Logan.

“Chair Lowe and Deputy Chair Mitchell were invited to Utah by the Sundance Film Festival,” said Katie Lee-Koven, NEHMA’s executive director. “They added some visits to meet grant recipients and stopped by Utah State University and then Stokes Nature Center.”

A small group of faculty and administrators from the Caine College of the Arts, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHaSS), and NEHMA gathered in the museum’s media room with NEH’s most senior leaders who were “super excited,” Lowe said, to hear about NEH-funded projects during their “first official trip to Utah.”

“You see the grants that come across your desk, but when you go into the field

and you actually see it … put to use,” Mitchell said, “it really brings it to life.”

The endowment is an independent federal agency that funds initiatives in the humanities, including research, education, preservation and public programs.

“Our faculty regularly and enthusiastically pursue a variety of funding and programming offered by the National Endowment for the Humanities to further their innovative research and creative endeavors,” said Julia Gossard, associate dean for research in CHaSS.

The museum was recently awarded a $750,000 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Grant in support of the new Wanlass Center for Art Education & Research, a nearly 9,500-foot facility dedicated to storing and showcasing the museum’s growing collection while providing space for research and a multi-purpose studio and classroom. NEHMA was one of two organizations to receive the maximum amount of NEH funding in 2022, and Lowe and Mitchell briefly toured the construction site during their visit.

In addition, NEHMA is working with a conservator to restore murals that were saved from the Intermountain Inter-tribal Indian School prior to its demolition. According to Lee-Koven, the Brigham City school was the largest boarding school for Native Americans in the United States and, throughout its operation, housed over 20,000 students from 99 tribes across the country.

Now under the care of USU, the murals are some of the last physical remnants and contribute significantly to depicting the experiences of the students who attended the school. This project was awarded a $30,000 NEH Chair’s Grant, a special initiative from Chair Lowe’s office. An exhibition of the conserved murals is expected at NEHMA in spring 2025.

"The Infrastructure and Capacity Building Grant was significant in our ability to leverage support and fundraise for the Wanlass Center,” Lee-Koven said. “And the Intermountain Inter-Tribal Indian School mural project is important for us to help steward and share as a part of Utah history, not only in terms of the boarding school experience but also how the school’s robust arts programs provided students a unique platform to express their cultural heritage through their artistic creations.”

In CHaSS, notable examples of recent NEH-funded projects include a summer stipend last year in support of Danielle Ross’ research and a $99,890 grant for the Bringing War Home initiative, which has seen faculty and students meet with veterans and their families across the state of Utah to collect and create an archive of war artifacts and associated stories.

During Friday’s meeting, Bringing War Home co-directors Molly Cannon and Susan Grayzel had the opportunity to share stories about the most unique objects they have encountered and provide updates on the progress of their project since it was launched in 2021.

“The funding funds the project, but it also serves to make additional connections,” said Cannon, explaining that the NEH award had not only made it possible to launch Bringing War Home but had, in turn, spurred new opportunities to keep the project going. “We’ve partnered with Utah Public Radio and worked with Utah Humanities, … and now [we’ve] received funding from the Utah Historical Society and the Utah Division of Arts and Technology.”

In closing, Mitchell stressed the importance of continuing to involve young people in humanities research.

“We're gonna need young people to get involved, because honestly, they're gonna be around a lot longer than we are,” he joked. “Maybe they're going to bring new solutions to the problems that we don't necessarily have identified. Maybe they have a perspective that we haven't thought about.”

The NEH is currently accepting applications for Summer 2024 Pathway Interns through Jan. 26. These paid internships are conducted virtually and open to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students: https://www.neh.gov/about/human-resources/career-opportunities

“Utah State has a really robust and well-known undergraduate research program where our students have opportunities to formally engage with research,” Gossard said. “The more we can support those experiences, [and support] experiential learning for our students at both the undergraduate and graduate level … the more our students can leverage these resources, not just at the university level, but at the national level as well.”