American Academy's
Humanities Indicators Project Receives Hewlett Foundation Grant
Wednesday, January
08, 2003 - The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has
received a $750,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to
advance the Academy's work on statistical indicators for the humanities as part
of its Initiative for Humanities and Culture. The grant will be used to
improve data collection about the humanities and American education, to
strengthen the research infrastructure on the humanities, and to create new
research tools to improve our understanding of the state of the liberal arts
and knowledge more generally.
Modeled on the
National Science Foundation's Science and Engineering Indicators, the
Humanities Indicators will eventually provide much-needed information about the
humanities workforce, the importance of humanities studies to American
education and civic life, and the future of humanities education. The co-chairs
of the Academy Committee on Humanities Indicators are Francis Oakley,
president emeritus of Williams College and interim president of the American
Council of Learned Societies; Stephen Raudenbush, professor of education
and statistics at the University of Michigan; and Kenneth Prewitt,
Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and former director of the
United States Census Bureau.
Commenting on the
Hewlett grant, Leslie Berlowitz, Chief Executive Officer of the American
Academy, said: "In order for any field to understand its current health, it
needs to understand trends. The science and engineering communities have this
kind of planning data, but there is almost a total absence of information of
this type for the humanities disciplines. The Academy is pleased that the
Hewlett Foundation recognizes how vital these statistics are for the humanities
community as well."
The Academy is
working in partnership with a consortium of leading nonprofit organizations in
the humanities and higher education, including the Association of American
Universities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National
Humanities Alliance. The Hewlett grant will assist this group as it works to
design guidelines for collecting humanities data that can be adopted by
scholarly and professional organizations, public humanities organizations, and
national educational groups. The development of such a template will allow the
professions to collect data consistently and compare these data across their
respective fields.
The grant will also
advance the Academy's plans to commission a model series of research studies
that draws on datasets from the National Center for Education Statistics at the
U. S. Department of Education. These papers will address concerns about the
quality of the liberal arts and the humanities in education, including
enrollments, course-taking patterns, and school and university staffing.
The Academy will
also explore the possibility of creating new databases that follow humanities
graduates in the labor market. At present, no existing database tracks the
career choices of those who hold undergraduate or master's degrees in the
humanities. New, consistent information would permit comparisons to be made
among the humanities, social sciences, and science disciplines.
The Hewlett
Foundation, incorporated as a private foundation in the State of California in
1966, was established by the late Palo Alto industrialist William R. Hewlett,
his wife, Flora Lamson Hewlett, and their eldest son, Walter B. Hewlett. The
Foundation's broad purpose is to promote the well-being of humanity by
supporting selected activities of a charitable nature, as well as organizations
or institutions engaged in such activities.
The Academy's Initiative
for Humanities and Culture was established to improve understanding of
the state of the humanities and to provide a framework for examining their
significance to our national culture. It will develop analyses and data to
enable scholars and policy makers to examine the history and outcome of these
transitions and develop resources and policies that will advance the humanities
in the 21st century.
The American Academy
was founded in 1780 by John Adams and other scholar-patriots "to
cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor,
dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The
current membership of over 3,700 Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members
includes more than 150 Nobel laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. Drawing
on the wide-ranging expertise of its membership, the Academy conducts
thoughtful, innovative, non-partisan studies on international security, social
policy, education, and the humanities.
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