NEH Announces $18 Million in New Grants

NEH creates learning opportunities through challenge grants, public programs, research fellowships

William R. Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), announced today the awarding of 248 NEH grants totaling $18 million. The grants--the first of three rounds of awards that will take place in fiscal year 2001--will support humanities programs at a variety of cultural institutions, including museums, libraries, schools, universities, and documentary film producers.

A full listing of the grants (57 pages) awarded by state is available as an Adobe Acrobat file.

"The new NEH grants will enable cultural institutions throughout the nation to enrich and expand their educational offerings to various audiences," said Chairman Ferris. "Through our funding support for new public programs, scholarly research and institutional development of humanities programs, NEH has the honor of helping to tell America's stories, which build bridges of understanding among the American people."

The November NEH grants include the annual challenge grants and the annual research fellowships. For this fiscal year (2001), there are 26 challenge grants for long-term institutional development of humanities programs and 175 fellowships to support the research of individual scholars.

Challenge grants, which the institutions must match by 3 or 4 to 1, can be used in a variety of ways, including renovation of buildings where educational programs take place or collections are displayed, endowment for curatorial positions in museums or scholars-in-residence at research centers, endowment for research programs in historical societies or public programs in libraries, and endowment for acquisition of books or artifacts.

NEH fellowships have been awarded to 175 college teachers, university professors and independent scholars for research on topics in the humanities. By supporting talented researchers, NEH fellowship grants help create new knowledge in all fields of the humanities, including history, literature and philosophy.

Programs and number of projects funded this round are:

• Challenge grants (26)--$11,146,000
  (Awarded to universities, colleges, public libraries, research centers, museums, other nonprofit institutions.)
• Research fellowships to individual scholars (175)--$6,125,000
• Public programs (47)--$741,000
  •  consultation grants for film projects, museum exhibitions, web projects (45)--441,000
  •  digital educational enhancements for public television documentaries (2)--300,000

NEH grants are awarded on a competitive basis. Throughout the year, humanities experts outside of the Endowment assess all applications and judge the quality and significance of each proposed project.

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.