Five New Jersey Middle and High Schools Receive $10,000 Grants for Humanities Curriculum Development

National Endowment for the Humanities and Dodge Foundation extend partnership

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Morristown, N.J.-based Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation today announced the awarding of five $10,000 grants to New Jersey middle and high schools. Now in its second year, the NEH-Dodge Humanities Scholar in Residence Program brings outside humanities educators into selected New Jersey schools to serve as consultants for improving the schools' humanities curricula.

The schools and their projects are:

• Berkeley Heights, Berkeley Heights School District
  $10,000
  PROJECT DIRECTOR: Jack Dennis, (908) 464-1600
  DESCRIPTION: Support for a team of faculty and the principal at COLUMBIA MIDDLE SCHOOL to work with a humanities scholar to incorporate materials on the Holocaust into the humanities curriculum.
• Emerson, Emerson Junior-Senior High School
  $10,000
  PROJECT DIRECTOR: Clifford Brooks, (201) 599-4179
  DESCRIPTION: Support for a team of seven teachers to work with a scholar on the history, geography, literature, art and culture of Latin America.
• Holmdel, William R. Satz School
  $10,000
  PROJECT DIRECTOR: Brian Johnston, (732) 946-1808
  DESCRIPTION: Support for a team of social studies teachers and the principal to incorporate the arts into the teaching of American history from 1890 to the present.
• Montvale, Pascack Valley Regional High School District
  $10,000
  PROJECT DIRECTOR: Edie Weinthal, (201) 358-1113
  DESCRIPTION: Support for a team of teachers and a district humanities supervisor to develop new approaches to teaching about Native Americans.
• Princeton, Princeton Regional Schools
  $10,000
  PROJECT DIRECTOR: Barbara O'Breza, (609) 683-4480
  DESCRIPTION: Support for a team of teachers and the district language arts and social studies coordinator to examine the global movement for women's rights.

The NEH-Dodge Humanities Scholars in Residence Program is open to public middle and high schools in New Jersey. The program is a pioneering effort to help schools rethink how they teach history, literature, and foreign languages and cultures.

Dodge has now provided $100,000 for the program. A total of 10 New Jersey schools have received the $10,000 grants. NEH administers the program and conducts the review process.

"By incorporating the expertise of master educators, the Humanities Scholar in Residence Program enriches the teaching of the humanities in New Jersey middle and high schools," said NEH Chairman William R. Ferris. "It is a flexible program that enables each school to strengthen humanities education in specific areas of the curriculum. This partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Dodge Foundation is a model for improving the teaching of the humanities in middle and high schools across America, and we at NEH are working to identify foundations in other states with whom we can form similar partnerships."

"What drew Dodge to this work is that first and foremost it takes the scholarship of K-12 teachers seriously, and, in turn, the intellectual life of their students," said Alexandra Christy, the Dodge Foundation's senior program officer. "As you look at each grant, you realize the sky's the limit if you ask a teacher to dream."

A Humanities Scholar in Residence grant covers visits to a school by an outside humanities scholar or teacher, who meets with administrators, teachers, librarians and students to prepare an action plan for improving humanities teaching in the school. Follow-up consultations by the scholar refine the plan, and in a report the following year, the school team assesses changes that have been made and identify improvements in curriculum, environment and teaching.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities. NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs in libraries and other community places.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, founded in 1974 through the bequest of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, supports and encourages educational, cultural, social and environmental values that contribute to a more humane society and more livable world. Grants in education, which total over $5 million annually, focus on elevating the profession of teaching and improving public education at the primary and secondary level.