The Prairie Landscape

Illinois Humanities Council Receives Grant from Bank One Foundation for the Odyssey Project in Springfield

11/12/2002

CHICAGO - The Illinois Humanities Council is pleased to announce that they have received a $5,000 grant from Bank One Foundation in support of the Odyssey Project in Springfield. Now in its third year in Illinois, the Illinois Humanities Council launched the Odyssey Project, a free, eight-month program of college-level humanities courses for people living in poverty, in Springfield in September 2002 at the Family Service Center. The Bank One Foundation grant will support faculty salaries and books for students.

Founded on the theory that engagement with the humanities can offer a way out of poverty, the Odyssey Project, in partnership with the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, offers course participants 110 hours of instruction in four humanistic disciplines. Students explore masterpieces in literature, art history, philosophy, and United States history. Writing instruction is also integral to the coursework. The Bard Clemente Course in the Humanities (of which the Odyssey Project is a part) is in its seventh year, with more than 26 sites operating in the 2002-2003 academic year in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

"The Illinois Humanities Council is thrilled to bring the Odyssey Project to Springfield," explains Angel Ysaguirre, Director of Programs at the Illinois Humanities Council. "The studentsí enthusiasm is evident; their attendance is great, and their thirst for this kind of education clear."

Classes meet two evenings a week over a twenty-eight week period at the Family Service Center in downtown Springfield. Syllabi and reading lists are roughly equivalent to those a student might encounter in a first-year humanities survey course at a first-rate university. Tuition is free and books, childcare, and transportation vouchers are provided. Bard College grants a certificate of achievement to any student who completes the course and six college credits to those completing it at a high level of performance.

Faculty
Art History
Shelley Cordulack, Associate Professor of Art History at Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois

Literature
Jennifer Haytock, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Springfield

Critical Thinking and Writing
Nancy McKinney, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois

Philosophy
Richard E. Palmer recently retired from forty years of teaching philosophy, religion, and world literature at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois.

American History
Vibert L. White, Jr., Chair and Associate Professor of African-American Studies and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

For more information about the Odyssey Project, please call Nancy McKinney, Director of the Odyssey Project in Springfield at (217) 820-6150. For more information about the Illinois Humanities Council, call (312) 422-5580 or visit www.prairie.org.

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