The School of Humanities will continue to cultivate its regional and international ties through outreach, engagement, collaborative research, and communications efforts that link faculty and students with dynamic partners in the community and globally. At the same time, we need to support new and even more effective ways for engaging the various outside communities whom we serve and among whom we live.
- Expand our existing strengths in engaged research and teaching, such as the History Project, which supports local high-school teachers; Humanities Out There, which connects our students with underserved local school districts; THINK! which introduces fifth-graders to philosophy; and the Vietnamese American Oral History Project, which preserves a key part of our community's historical legacy.
- Support faculty in meaningful public engagement by expanding existing infrastructure such as the Humanities Commons, the Forum for the Academy and the Public, and Illuminations, as well as more formalized connections and joint programming with local libraries, museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions.
- Make SOH a destination for the local community through joint public/campus events, the provision of public spaces for the exchange of ideas, greater faculty involvement in regional service, and the expansion of cultural offerings that address community interests.
- Establish staff/faculty/student service days and opportunities to build bridges with community.
- Strengthen alumni and community engagement by exploring new concepts in degree renewal and lifelong learning, such as OLLI; promote participation in campus events through evolving communications tools and new networks of supporters.
- Create a more inclusive School culture that values external constituents, alumni, and emeriti.
- Build upon the environmental humanities to encourage an ethos of sustainability for students, faculty, and staff that integrates historical knowledge and cultural awareness with technological solutions.
- Leverage the medical humanities to host community conversations about health and well-being that are historically aware and culturally sensitive.
- Cultivate inclusive excellence, cross-cultural understanding and community collaborations through our commitment to ethnic/gender/sexuality studies.
- Promote regional place-making through cross-campus and community conversations around architecture, urbanism, and planning as well as media, technology and design.
