EvCC receives $300,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant

Press Release

Release Date: July 1, 2020

Contact: Heather Mayer, NEH Project Director and EvCC’s Director of Educational Technology, 425-388-9585; hmayer@everettcc.edu

Everett, Wash. - Everett Community College has been awarded a $300,000 CARES Act grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop templates for online Humanities classes using free resources instead of student textbooks. 

The grant-funded changes will affect high-enrollment Humanities courses starting this Fall. More than 5,000 EvCC students took those courses in 2018-19, including 2,257 dually enrolled high school students.  

“We are grateful to be a recipient of the NEH award. These funds will support much-needed faculty support in the creation of Open Educational Resources, providing students access to low-cost and no-cost textbooks. These resources will help to level the playing field for access and equality for students at Everett Community College,” said EvCC President Daria Willis. 

EvCC’s Center for Transformative Teaching and eLearning will work with Humanities faculty this Summer to develop online templates using best practices in course design, culturally responsive teaching, authentic assessment and accessibility. 

Classes include English Composition, Introduction to Literature, Interpersonal Communication, U.S. History and Introduction to Philosophy. These courses will utilize materials that are free and open to the public (Open Educational Resources), eliminating the need for students to buy textbooks. Any faculty teaching these courses may use and adapt these templates.

For this highly competitive grant, the NEH received 2,300 applications and awarded grants to 317 organizations. Everett Community College is one of eight institutions in Washington to receive the grant.

“This collaboration between eLearning and instructional faculty can be a model going forward for how we can develop well-designed courses using materials that have no cost to students and meet all of our accessibility guidelines,” said Heather Mayer, NEH Project Director and EvCC’s Director of Educational Technology. 

In the middle of budget cuts, this NEH CARES Act will allow the college to retain an additional Instructional Designer for the project and hire an Instructional Technology Specialist to support faculty in the process of bringing these classes online.

For more information about EvCC Humanities classes, see EverettCC.edu/Humanities.