CIC Awarded NEH Cares Grant

8/10/2020 — Washington, DC

The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) announced that it was awarded a grant as part of a new National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) initiative, funded by the CARES Act, to support humanities programs at cultural organizations that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. CIC will receive $130,000 to be used to sustain current faculty development programs in the humanities and engage participants in postponed events through virtual convenings.

The main goal of the NEH CARES program is to sustain essential operations at selected organizations and especially to retain key employees. The competition for these grants was strong: of the over 2,300 eligible applications submitted, only 317 were funded.

CIC President Richard Ekman said the grant will be used to support the following six CIC projects:

Humanities Research for the Public Good initiative
Legacies of American Slavery network activities
New Currents in Teaching Philosophy institutes
Teaching Interfaith Understanding seminars
Deliberation & Debate seminars
Civil War: Origins and Consequences seminar

The grant will partially cover staffing costs for three staff members and five senior advisors, and will be used to sustain these programs and offer virtual events to engage participants.

In announcing the new grant program, NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede said, “We know that,
across the country, so many cultural organizations and the staff they employ are suffering severe hardship due to the pandemic. NEH is working quickly to distribute emergency funds to strengthen the nation’s museums, archives, libraries, historic sites, universities, and other educational institutions, and to support the communities and economies that rely on them.”

The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) is an association of 765 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. CIC is the major national organization that focuses on services to leaders of independent colleges and universities and state-based councils. CIC offers conferences, seminars, publications, and other programs and services that help institutions improve educational quality, administrative and financial performance, student outcomes, and institutional visibility. It conducts the largest annual conferences of college and university presidents and of chief academic officers in the United States. Founded in 1956, CIC is headquartered at One Dupont Circle in Washington, DC.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. View dditional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs.