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NEH CHALLENGE GRANTS

We Did It Again!

In September 2022, the Miami University Humanities Center won a $500,000 Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant will support the creation of a new, state-of-the-art Humanities Center at Miami. Miami received the maximum award given by NEH in 2022. The grant challenges Miami to raise $2M to build a new humanities center prominently located in the atrium of Bachelor Hall, which will undergo a major renovation beginning in the summer of 2024.

Once again, we ask your help in meeting this challenge.

Over the years, our alumni, community partners, and friends have provided exceptional support for the Humanities Center since its founding in 2009. In 2015, the Center won a $500,000 NEH Challenge Grant to create a permanent endowment for our programs. The 2015 award recognized Miami's innovative approach to faculty-student collaboration, its emphasis on pressing social challenges, and its commitments to public engagement and research excellence. 

The award challenged Miami to raise $1.5 million in matching donations by 2020. Thanks to you, we met the challenge in 2019, six months ahead of schedule. The resulting $2 million endowment now supports our Humanities Labs,  Research Collective, Apprenticeship Program, and associated public programming.

Your generous response to NEH challenge funding has made the following possible:

• Since 2015, more than 10,000 people have attended center lectures, symposia, readings, and other events.
• Thousands of Miami students have benefited from  special classes, workshops, and research programs.
• 300 faculty members have collaborated with each other across disciplines on research and public engagement.
• 200 Humanities Lab students have worked with faculty teams to put knowledge to work for public good.
• 125 undergraduate research apprentices have assisted faculty on published research.
•  Research Collaborative awards have funded an award-winning podcast, a PBS documentary, and multiyear projects on human migration studies and environmental humanities.  
• The center has  Center has built 16 different programs for students, faculty, and community members.

a view looking up at a ceiling seeing domed ceiling with windows in the center and looking up at a statue of a man with a red box to the left that reads 'Leading Humanities Scholarship in the 21st Century'National Endowment for the Humanities Seal