March 17, 2025
The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) is pleased to share a new report on Humanities Research for the Public Good: A CIC Initiative to Connect Colleges and Communities through Student Research and Public Programs (2019–2024). The report examines the positive impact of public-facing humanities projects on independent colleges and universities, their communities, student researchers, faculty advisors, campus librarians and archivists, and community-based partner organizations.
The report includes a list of 62 projects supported by CIC grants to member institutions, with links to resources. Each project combined undergraduate research with public-facing activities. Many of the projects are discussed in detail as models for other institutions. The report is available on the CIC website.
Among the report’s conclusions:
- The grant-funded projects created opportunities for students, faculty members, and administrators to join in a process of shared discovery, a process that often extended to include community members who collaborated on the projects. Well-designed projects rooted in the humanities can expand public understanding of the past, present, and future—especially when projects focus on topics of regional significance and community interest.
- Public humanities research aligns with many characteristics associated with high-impact educational practices. Public humanities projects foster collaboration, encourage discovery and creativity, invite students to expand their understanding of cultures and communities that differ from their own, and promote the consideration of ways that humanities research can help address contemporary issues. Humanities research with a public-facing component can help students develop new skills, explore new career paths, and enhance a sense of connection with their peers, professors, and communities.
- Guiding students through publicly engaged, project-based, collaborative community projects typically requires more time, more scaffolding, and more coaching than faculty members often bring to traditional humanities instruction. But the result can be an increase in the quality and quantity of direct interactions with students and colleagues.
- The funded projects highlighted the riches housed in small college libraries, archives, and collections. They also provided opportunities to explore how archivists, librarians, and curators can support the academic work of students and faculty members more effectively and more creatively.
- Public humanities projects prosper when they align project goals with broad institutional missions, strategic plans, or current initiatives at a college.
- Public humanities work can help shift the perceptions that campuses and communities have about each other. Such projects are opportunities to rethink the role that community institutions and community members play in the life of a college or university—and the role that institutions play in their communities.
Humanities Research for the Public Good was supported by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation with supplemental support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The report was prepared by Anne M. Valk, professor of history and director of the American Social History Project (CUNY Graduate Center), with Philip M. Katz, CIC’s senior director of projects.
For more information, contact Philip M. Katz at pkatz@cic.edu.
About CIC
The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) is an association of more than 700 nonprofit independent colleges and universities, state-based councils of independent colleges, and other higher education affiliates, that works to support college and university leadership, advance institutional excellence, and enhance public understanding of independent higher education’s contributions to society. Founded in 1956, CIC is headquartered at One Dupont Circle in Washington, DC.