The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has committed a matching grant of $500,000 to the University of Rochester, which will establish an endowment for the University’s continued partnership in the Central New York Humanities Corridor.
Founded in 2006 with generous support from the Mellon Foundation, the CNY Humanities Corridor is an interdisciplinary collaboration among research institutions Syracuse University, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester—along with the schools of the New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium—focused on enhancing scholarship in the humanities. Each institution brings a distinguished humanistic scholarly tradition to the collective work of the CNY Humanities Corridor, and in the aggregate, the Corridor’s programs bolster the relationships, productivity, and reciprocity common to the region’s humanities community.
“The success of the CNY Humanities Corridor in bringing together faculty with shared interests, as well as in sponsoring high-impact events in the humanities disciplines demonstrates the value of this model, and its viability,” said Peter Lennie, provost and the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences and Engineering.
Building on its scholarly strengths, the University has contributed broadly to the CNY Humanities Corridor in visual culture, philosophy, music, and archives and media. Establishing a CNY Humanities Corridor endowment at Rochester will enable more long-term planning, help ensure the sustainability of the existing model, and help expand it to include more academic partners across Upstate New York. The University will now raise $500,000 to match the Mellon Foundation grant by Jan. 1, 2018 to establish the endowment.
A $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to the University in October 2013 helped create “Humanities Labs” at Rochester, which tackle large-scale problems in the digital humanities and involve research that brings together faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. These labs and associated programs supported by the Mellon Foundation have increased interest across the wide range of humanistic disciplines, most notably in the digital humanities.
For more information on the CNY Humanities Corridor, visit: http://www.syracusehumanities.org/mellon. For more details on this Mellon Foundation grant, read: http://news.syr.edu/cny-humanities-corridor-awarded-3-55-million-from-mellon-foundation-29991/
