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About Employing Humanities

We are excited to launch Employing Humanities, an initiative to make stronger, more explicit links between what students do in their coursework and what they’ll do when they graduate. The Mellon Foundation saw the potential of Employing Humanities and provided $1,000,000 to support Humanities’ undergraduate majors and minors with paid and for-credit experiential learning opportunities that connect their classroom curriculum with hands-on training, including undergraduate research and internships.

Employing Humanities will also connect students with community organizations through service learning opportunities that broaden student experiences and directly impact society. We aim to equip our students with the skills to succeed as socially-just leaders in professional, academic, and community-engaged settings.

Rebecca Snyder sitting at her desk.
Rebecca Snyder at work digitizing the MAH’s LGBTQ+ Collection in her Undergraduate Public Fellowship. [Photo credit: The Humanities Institute]

Our Goals

  1. Increase Experiential Learning Opportunities for Humanities Majors
  2. Create Career Paths & Programs for Humanities Majors
  3. Implement New Humanities Curricular Innovations for All Majors

Cross-disciplinary academic certificates such as Humanizing Technology and Visualizing Abolition Studies are helping more UC Santa Cruz students experience the value of humanistic training, regardless of their major.

We believe that training in the humanities is essential for a successful and fulfilling future, both individually and collectively. Our work stems from the idea that the humanities transform lives and society for the better, and must play a central role in the imagining and iteration of the engaged democracy we aspire to be. As our alumni know, students and faculty in the Humanities at UCSC have a long history of reimagining the world; today, we are proving once again that we excel as thinkers and doers.


Experiential Learning comes in many forms Internship: Integrates knowledge and theory learned in the classroom with practical application and skills development in a professional setting at local non-profit organizations, community archives, or cultural institutions. Public Fellowship: A unique form of internship where students work on public humanities research, programming, or communications. Students contribute to the creation of a public-facing exhibit, product, or event. Undergraduate Research: Scaffolded inquiry or An investigation conducted under the guidance of a faculty mentor, that makes an original intellectual or creative contribution to the discipline. Includes: apprenticeship, consultant, joint creation, research teams, course-based. Research Assistantship: Students are hired to work directly with a faculty member on their current research project. Assistants gain many professional research skills that prepare them for graduate studies. Project-Based Learning: An engaging, open-ended, and complex real-world question or Challenge motivates students to identify and research the concepts and principles needed to work through problems. Service-Learning: Meaningful community service or a community-engaged project that directly intersects with the academic field. Students apply their knowledge and skills to address or advocate for community needs. Immersion Travel: Students actively participate in and are exposed to different cultures, languages, communities, and ways of life. Students gain education in their respective areas of study and an expanded cultural perspective. Field Study: Students earn course credit to observe, interpret, and participate actively in the field. Faculty supervise an academic component.

What is Experiential Learning?

Experiential Learning is a process in which students engage in cycles of direct experience and focused reflection to enhance personal and intellectual growth, as well as acquire practical skills. Experiential learning informs many methodologies and can occur in various settings on and off campus and usually takes a ‘learn-by-doing’ approach.

Experiential Learning Cycle

EXPERIENCING

Active engagement through a concrete experience.

REFLECTING

Reflect on & process the experience, analyze, and make meaning.

THINKING

Conceptualize ideas and develop new insights. Connect theory and practice. Examine lessons learned.

APPLYING

Act and apply the knowledge gained in future experiences.

FEEDBACK

Continually identify improvement areas, reinforce learning.

Employing Humanities will create an array of opportunities, such as:

Paid Internships - Humanities EXCEL Program

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EXCEL Fellowships are internships that integrate knowledge and theory learned in the classroom with practical application and skills development in a professional setting at local non-profit organizations, community archives, or cultural institutions.

Undergraduate Research – EXPLORE Program

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  • Faculty-Led Undergraduate Research Projects
  • Undergraduate Research Fellows in Linguistics and Language Science: A three-quarter program that includes a sequenced proseminar for course credit to orient students to research in Linguistics, a paid research internship, and an original research project.
  • Research Labs such as:

Community-Engaged Learning

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Courses that aim to address or advocate for community needs, such as:

  • CRES 14: Center for Racial Justice Service Learning
  • CRES 15: Resource Centers Service Learning

Projects led by UCSC Humanities faculty connect academic and cultural institutions with community archives to address shared concerns, explore cultural heritage, and promote mutual learning:

Study Immersion Travel

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Domestic and international travel that is connected to coursework.

Career Pathways

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Professionalization courses and career readiness programming prepare students to learn how to leverage their academic skills to make the most of their professional opportunities. Students see the relevancy of their degree in action out in the world.

  • Where a Literature Degree Can Take You [In Development]

How to Get Involved

Two students studying at their laptops.

Students

Visit our Experiential Learning Programs page for more information about internship and research opportunities.

Front of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History building.

Prospective Partners

Interested in partnering with us and hosting interns at your organization? Visit our Community Partners page to learn more.

Faculty and staff talking in a conference room.

Faculty/Staff

If you are interested in creating curricular or co-curricular opportunities for students, please visit the faculty page.

Three humanities students waving at the camera.

Donate

With your support, our Employing Humanities fund will create experiential learning opportunities for all Humanities majors, transfer student programming, and Humanities certificate programs targeting STEM students.


Email our Assistant Director of Experiential Learning Kylie Rachwalski a hum-experiential-learning@ucsc.edu with questions.

The Mellon Foundation, The Helen and Will Webster Foundation, The Humanities Institute, and the UCSC Humanities Division generously support the Humanities EXCEL Program.