Ursinus College has received a $1.49 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to help launch a new interdisciplinary center designed to reimagine the role of the humanities in career preparation, social justice, and civic life.
The award, part of the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times initiative, will fund the creation of the Center for Humanities in Action (CHIA), set to launch in fall 2026. The center will serve as a hub for curricular innovation, co-curricular programming, and community-engaged learning, reinforcing the humanities as a driving force in students’ academic and professional journeys.
“This grant from the Mellon Foundation is an investment in our students and in the future of Ursinus College,” said President Gundolf Graml, Ph.D. “The Center for Humanities in Action will empower students to connect critical thinking, creativity, and empathy with meaningful careers and lives of purpose. Just as important, this grant reflects growing confidence in Ursinus as an institution that is boldly shaping the future of liberal arts education and preparing students to lead in a rapidly changing world.”
For Lori Daggar, associate professor of history at Ursinus and primary investigator on the grant, it is both an affirmation of the humanities’ lasting value and a forward-looking investment in their future.
“The grant program that the Mellon Foundation runs is to ensure that the humanities have staying power for both the present and the future,” Daggar said. “This grant will ensure that the humanities at Ursinus College have not only a robust presence, but an even more robust future.”
CHIA will be one of three emerging interdisciplinary centers within APEX (Applied. Professional. Experiential.). Grounded in liberal education, APEX enables all students to apply their learning in project-based courses, collaborate with faculty and fellow students on solutions to global problems, and build career-relevant competencies.
According to the proposal, the phrase “in action” refers to innovation — emphasizing that the humanities are key to doing work in the world, particularly in fields and callings that advance social justice and human flourishing.
CHIA will bring together several existing Ursinus innovation hubs, including the Justice and Community Collective, the Hub for Arts in Action, and Sustainability Solutions, creating a unified home for programming focused on social justice, museum studies, creative writing, environmental issues, and climate change.
A central goal of CHIA is to expand student engagement with the humanities across disciplines. Over the life of the grant, Ursinus aims to increase the percentage of humanities majors from 12 percent to at least 20 percent, while ensuring that nearly all students engage meaningfully with humanistic inquiry during their time on campus.
Daggar said the center will help students see that the humanities and career readiness are not mutually exclusive.
“I hope the center will give students the ability to think that I can have a job and do something that I care about and that I love and that I think is good for the world,” she said.
In a time increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, Daggar said the humanities are more vital than ever.
“The humanities remind us that a world that is both humane and human is desirable, achievable, and necessary,” she said. “It champions critical thinking and foregrounds empathy that we need for the world that we have.”
To learn more about the grant and the upcoming Center for Humanities in Action, visit Ursinus College.
