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Lake Forest College students to gain firsthand humanities experience with help from $1.1 million grant

A new $1.1 million grant will help Lake Forest College students learn more about race relations in the Chicago area and provide them with opportunities to contribute to museums and work on social justice initiatives, officials said.

The grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will go toward the college’s “Humanities 2020” project, helping students and faculty explore and tackle “big problems” and questions facing society, said Anna Trumbore Jones, the Humanities 2020 project director and history professor at Lake Forest College.

Specifically, students and faculty will use the grant to contribute to local museum exhibits, work on social justice initiatives and develop public programming related to race relations in Chicago, officials said.

Trumbore Jones said students also will have the opportunity to conduct research and may be able to participate in internships.

“A lot of our students have a hard time envisioning what a career in humanities looks like and they don’t have a sense of the range of opportunities for people who major in humanities,” Trumbore Jones said. “So, I think actually going out there and engaging with these institutions and their work will represent tremendously important opportunities for our students.”

Using proceeds from the grant, the college plans to work with the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Humanities Festival, Heartland Alliance, the Metropolitan Planning Council, the Society of Architectural Historians and Oakton Community College, Trumbore Jones said.

“This is a true partnership,” she said. “We want to provide our partners with knowledge and resources that is useful for them.”