Amílcar E. Challú (Assoc. Prof. of History, and chair)

Chad Iwertz Duffy (Assist. Prof. of English)

Faculty in English, History and the Institute for the Culture and Society have been collaborating in a project funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities — CARES Act grant. This project has three big objectives: 1) to support our humanities programs to adapt to the new pedagogical needs of COVID times; 2) to mitigate the negative impact of the COVID crisis; 3) to learn from the multimodal experience in the humanities. Chad I. Duffy (English) and Amílcar E. Challú (History) are the co-principal investigators.

Part of the grant personnel recently got together in a round table for the “21st Century Englishes” conference in BGSU, moderated by Stevie Scheurich (Ph.D. candidate in ACS). Panelists discussed the progress of the grant, which is on track for its conclusion by the end of this calendar year, . The project organized a successful “summer camp” that provided BGSU faculty with new tools to approach the challenges of the fall semester. It also helped retain part-time faculty that served 13% of the enrollment in the targeted humanities programs, and almost 3% of the entire fall enrollment. Finally, researchers are on track to conclude surveys and initiate the reporting and writing of the experience of humanities teaching staff in BGSU.

Responding to questions sent by participants, the panelists encouraged graduate students to work on their grant writing skills and discussed different strategies and opportunities. The discussion then veered towards the lessons of the COVID pandemic in the humanities. The panelists stressed the need to take risks, reflect on the experience, and overcome traditional barriers that curtailed the opportunities for learning.

We invite all to watch the video of the roundtable in this youtube video. For comments, do not hesitate to reply to this blog (note: comments do not post automatically) or to contact the project directors.