The Utah Humanities Council awarded the Tanner Humanities Center with the Humanities Partnership Award for its work in interdisciplinary study and raising public awareness of the humanities by providing lectures to members of the community.
Humanities professors Bob Goldberg, Norman Council, and Larry Gerlach and Dean Robert Newman, accepted the award on behalf of the center as educators and the effort they’ve put into bringing humanities topics to the local community.
“The purpose of the new award is to recognize a kindred soul in the world of public humanities activities,” said Jon Weisberg, chairman of the Utah Humanities Council. “(The council) is a longtime UHC collaborator, and on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, we thought it would be appropriate to recognize it for its many accomplishments.”
The award was given partly for the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, an annual lecture series that has been offered for more than 20 years.
“We have a proven 20-year service record that has given the Tanner Humanities Center a high profile, not only in Utah, but the Rocky Mountain region,” said Goldberg, director of the center and history professor. “The center’s staff was very pleased to receive so prestigious an award. This is our 20th year of working to support humanities research and providing humanities outreach to campus and community.”
The center places an emphasis on providing opportunities for the advancement of the humanities, which includes a fundraiser for a new fellowship for a graduate student to be offered next year.
“It’s just a sign of the quality of their work and the speakers they bring,” said Jean Cheney, associate director of the council. “We’re very lucky to have the center.”
Cheney said she recently read a lecture by Wallace Stegner, a novelist who spoke at the U in the early 1980s through the annual lecture series.
Goldberg said the award will improve the U’s reputation of being a great school for humanities, and could help influence other organizations and potential donors to give money for future fellowships or projects at the U.
“THC’s programs have elevated public awareness of the humanities both on campus and in the wider non-academic community, and have built pride among those of us who have humanities degrees that have been instrumental in our success in other realms,” Weisberg said.