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2023 Conference Attendees: A Message from Executive Director Rusnak

From the CCHA Executive Director, Andrew Rusnak

CCHA National Conference, Austin Community College, October 12-14th

Austin City Limits Music Fest will be in full swing as community college humanities professors from around the country descend on Austin Community College and the Hilton Embassy Suites October 12-14 to celebrate CCHA’s 2023 National Conference. A vibrant, cultural city, Austin is perfect for foodies and music lovers. Our very gracious hosts at Austin Community College are working extremely hard to bring you a memorable academic and social experience. We hope that when you depart, it’s with lots of useful takeaways, connections to new friends, meaningful experiences, and reconnections with old acquaintances.

For planning, several items I would like to bring your attention to as well as ask for your patience:

  • If you plan to attend the Thursday night reception at the host hotel and wish to imbibe, please bring cash, as it’s a cash bar only.
  • On Friday, starting at 7am and running until 6pm, there will be a 40-seat bus that circulates from the hotel to ACC’s campus. The distance is about 2.5 miles on the street and one run will take approximately 7 minutes depending on traffic. On Saturday, a 24-seat bus will run from 7am to 3pm. Since it is a very busy weekend in Austin, shuttle services were limited, and this is all we could secure. There will be no shuttle service for Thursday workshops. The walk is estimated to be 21 minutes. Directions for hikers: Austin Community College: Highland Campus to Embassy Suites by Hilton Austin Central – Google Maps.
  • Since we will not be able to have lunch concurrent with the plenary sessions on Friday and Saturday, we ordered a variety of sandwich type options for both days in order to expedite the one-hour time we will have to actually dine before moving into the plenary session area. ACC has a great on-campus catering service and will provide a number of meat and vegetarian options.
  • Transportation from the Airport. There are a number of public options: “There are several bus services available at the airport, including Capital Metro, Greyhound, and Megabus. Capital Metro offers several bus lines that run from the airport to downtown Austin, including Route 20, Route 100, and Route 350. These lines operate daily and have frequent departures throughout the day.” There also are shared ride options that are allowed to pickup near your gate: “Rideshare Pickup/Dropoff Instructions for Austin Bergstrom International Airport. Rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft can drop you off at the departure level, along side regular passengers and taxis. Notify your driver of the airlines and preferably the terminal upon entering the airport premises.”
  • We hope that you make time to get out and explore the wonderful City of Austin. Getting around the city, there are a number of options: “The best way to get around Austin is by bus and light rail. Some travelers recommend a car; however, the expense and pains of one are enough to encourage many visitors to use Capital Metro – Austin’s public transit system.” Here is the link to the city’s Bus, Metro Rail, and Express Options, a great site for scheduling: Schedules & Maps – CapMetro – Austin Public Transit. Uber and Lyft also are available, as well as cab service:

Cost of a taxi in Austin

  1. Base fare: $2.50 (€2.20)
  2. Price per km: $1.50 (€1.30)
  3. Yellow Cab Austin: +1 512 452 9999
  4. Austin Express Cab Service +1 512 666 41410
  5. Pronto Rides: +1 512 580 3779

You won’t have to go far to explore much of what Austin has to offer. As mentioned above, the music festival will be in full throttle the weekend of our conference. Build in “sitting in traffic” at peak times. Austin ranks very low when it comes to overall and violent crime in major US cities and is considered one of America’s safest. That said, always be cognizant of your immediate surroundings. Practice situational awareness and follow all necessary protocols for guarding your safety and personal possessions. Here are a couple of ideas for fun:

Austin Visitor Guide
Digital Austin Visitor Guide

Sixth Street (Music Row)
Sixth Street is distinctly Austin. With its colorful and bustling array of bars, restaurants and entertainment venues, it’s a sure bet for experiencing local characters and the vibrancy of the city.
Guide to Austin’s 6th Street (6street.com)

 Austin Attendee Guide
Attendee Guide

Austin restaurants and Bars Guide
Best Austin Restaurants & Bars Guide – Cookie and Kate

21 Best Restaurants in Austin
The 21 Best Restaurants in Austin for an Epic Meal (timeout.com)

Austin Museums
10 Cool Museums to Visit in Austin | Visit Austin, TX (austintexas.org)

Cool Things to Do
Things To Do in Austin, Texas (austincityguide.com)

Discounts Around the City
Austin Insider Deals 

Deans Blog

CCHA’s Deans’ Committee hosts a Humanities Leadership Forum: August 3rd, 3:30-4:45

Please join CCHA’s Deans’ Committee on August 3rd, 3:30-4:45, for its Humanities Leadership Forum. This virtual event provides a platform for community college Humanities leaders to discuss a range of timely and consequential issues germane to the success of our students, colleagues, and institutions. Our inaugural event will focus on two such topics:

  • The impact of artificial intelligence in the humanities classroom
  • Best practices in leadership development

While the forum will be moderated by members of the Deans’ Committee, it will not comprise structured presentations. Rather, it will center the ideas and questions brought forth by attendees, thus helping us cultivate strategies for tackling the myriad challenges we face at our respective institutions.

Participation in this meaningful event is free and open to any and all community college humanities deans, chairs, and faculty leaders. Please REGISTER HERE for this event.

We look forward to seeing you on August 3rd!

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NHA Summer Virtual Workshop: Documenting the Impact of the Humanities in Higher Ed

The National Humanities Alliance is offering a summer virtual workshop opportunity with a discount available to our members. Documenting the Impact of the Public Humanities in Higher Education: A Toolkit will be offered on two dates this June, on the 22nd and 25th. This workshop will offer attendees the opportunity to consider impact research as it relates to their own work and to the humanities more broadly. While the toolkit focuses on public humanities projects (including internship programs, publicly engaged courses, reading and discussion groups, and oral history projects), they anticipate that it will also be relevant to those carrying out a wide range of humanities work.

Visit the NHA workshop page HERE for more information.

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Season Two of the NHA’s Podcast “What Are You Going to Do with That?” Now Available

WAYGDT SEASON 2 Twitter Post

The NHA is excited to announce a new season of What Are You Going to Do with That?, a podcast where we explore everyday folks’ decisions to study the humanities as undergraduates and their pathways to fulfilling careers!

This podcast is designed for students, as well as those who advise them, including parents, academic advisors, career counseling staff, and high school teachers and guidance counselors. Please spread the word!

The new season features 8 stories about diverse professionals with humanities backgrounds who not only do well for themselves but do good for the world. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you may get your podcasts.

Episodes include:

Continue reading Season Two of the NHA’s Podcast “What Are You Going to Do with That?” Now Available →

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Call for Proposals: NHA National Humanities Conference in Indianapolis, IN (10/25-29)

The 2023 National Humanities Conference Call for Proposals is open until April 3rd!

Co-hosted by the National Humanities Alliance and the Federation of State Humanities Councils, the National Humanities Conference brings together representatives from colleges, universities, state humanities councils, cultural institutions, and other community-based organizations to explore approaches to deepening the public’s engagement with the humanities. The conference will be held October 25-29 in Indianapolis. With the help of our partners at Indiana Humanities, we look forward to a conference that offers ample opportunities to engage with local and regional culture and history.

In keeping with the state motto of Indiana, “The Crossroads of America,” the 2023 conference theme is “Crossroads.”

Crossroads are places of choice and possibility—creative, reflective, and forward-looking—and we invite proposals that consider how the public humanities have arrived at their current place, what that place looks like to us today, and where we wish to go from here. We especially encourage proposals that engage humanities practitioners, professionals, and scholars/academics to discuss shared or aligned destinations as well as proposals that explore and delineate how and why we diverge.

View the full CFP

We encourage you to submit proposals and recruit others to do the same! Please contact Edward Moreno at events@statehumanities.org with any questions or for support in submitting a proposal.

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Call for Applicants, NEH Summer Institute, Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath

Deadline: Friday, March 3, 2023

The American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center will host a two-week NEH Summer Institute for 25 college and university faculty to study the visual culture of the American Civil War and Its aftermath.

The institute will focus on the era’s array of visual media–including paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, cartoons, illustrated newspapers, maps, ephemera and monuments–to examine how information and opinion about the war and its aftermath was recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans’ views on both sides of and before and after the conflict.

Participants will hear lectures by noted historians, art historians, and archivists and attend hands-on sessions in major museums and archives.  A team of three institute faculty that represents the range of work in the field will introduce participants to the rich body of new scholarship that addresses or incorporates Civil War and postwar visual culture, prompt them to do further research, and help them to use visual evidence to enhance their scholarship and teaching about the war and its short-and long-term effects.
Faculty and visiting speakers include:  Louise Bernard,  Michele Bogart, Joshua Brown, Sarah Burns, Gregory Downs, Matthew Fox-Amato, Aston Gonzalez, Hilary N. Green, Lauren Hewes, Dominique Jean-Louis,  Turkiya Lowe,  Amy Mooney, Susan Schulten, Scott Manning Stevens, and Heather Andrea Williams.

While scholars and teachers specializing in U.S. history, American studies, and art history will find the institute especially attractive, we encourage applicants from any field who are interested in the Civil War and Reconstruction era and its visual culture, regardless of your disciplinary interests. Independent scholars, scholars engaged in museum work or full-time graduate studies are also urged to apply.

Full details and application information are available on the ASHP/CML Institute website.

The Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.
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CCBC and JHU awarded $3.88 million from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

CCBC and JHU awarded $3.88 million from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

to support the schools’ Humanities for All 2.0 initiative

Collaborative efforts between the two schools help enrich students’ experience

 

Baltimore County, Md. – (Jan. 7, 2020), The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a combined $3.88 million to the Community College of Baltimore County and Johns Hopkins University to support collaborations between the two institutions on Humanities curriculum and pedagogy.

Continue reading CCBC and JHU awarded $3.88 million from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation →