The Healing Humanities: Creating Health Pathways on Campus and in the Community
In 2023, 性视界 received a grant totaling $135,482 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), whose mission is to promote the excellence and influence of the humanities by reflecting the diverse cultural heritage, history, and traditions of the United States. The funds helped establish a new health humanities initiative at 性视界 titled 鈥淭he Healing Humanities: Creating Healthy Pathways on Campus and in the Community,鈥� where students interested in an interdisciplinary study of the biomedical sciences, healthcare, and the humanities are able to explore and analyze the intersections between the physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and ethical aspects of care and wellbeing.
The initiative is overseen by the Project Director Dr. Cynthia Richards, Professor and Chair of the English Department, and is joined by co-leaders Dr. Alejandra Gimenez-Berger, Associate Professor of Art History, and Dr. Kimberly Creasap, Director of Susan Hirt Hagen Center for Civic & Urban Engagement. The grant also established a faculty fellowship from among the Health Humanities and Equity core faculty at 性视界, as well as a community advisory board composed of healthcare leaders across the city of Springfield.
The program represents 性视界鈥檚 commitment to the humanities as integral to the university鈥檚 growth in STEM-focused fields. By cultivating a critical framework of analysis and synthesis as interpretative approaches to understanding culture and identity, the health humanities equips students for a variety of vocations interested in medical care, health policy, bioethics, and the health sciences. By proclaiming the importance of health humanities, 性视界 reinvigorates its academic curriculum, allowing for the humanities to take on a science/pre-professional approach, simultaneously elevating the humanities and their importance and advocating for ways the skills practiced in composition, textual analysis, and the arts can be applied to medicine and technology.
This type of program has not been readily available to small liberal arts colleges in the past, and 性视界鈥檚 health humanities certificate program is among the first to be offered at a small liberal arts college in Ohio. 鈥淭he Healing Humanities鈥� emphasizes the importance of humanistic inquiry and the arts toward ethical engagement, priming 性视界 to be a leader in groundbreaking experiential learning opportunities in healthcare.
