Press Release

Bunker Hill Community College Wins NEH Grant

Monday, June 16, 2014

Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) has received a Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The College will receive $120,000 to conduct a three-year project in Asian American studies in partnership with the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Asian American Studies Program. “The project will provide a template for partnering with community organizations and institutions to produce robust humanities scholarship that is grounded in the Boston area’s rich local history, culture and communities,” said Pam Y. Eddinger, President of Bunker Hill Community College.

The collaboration will strengthen BHCC’s humanities program through the design and integration of Asian American studies curricula into the College’s learning communities. “I am thrilled that our institutions have joined together through an explicit humanities-centered curriculum focus,” said J. Keith Motley, Ph.D., Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston. 

Peter Kiang, Ed.D. Professor of Education and Director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston, will serve as the university’s Team Leader for the project. BHCC Dean of Humanities and Learning Communities Lori A. Catallozzi will serve as Project Director, and Director of Learning Communities Liya Escalera will serve as BHCC Team Leader. The U.S. Department of Education has designated both institutions as Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI).

The National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. 

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About Bunker Hill Community College
Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts, enrolling approximately 18,000 students annually. BHCC has two campuses in Charlestown and Chelsea, and a number of other locations throughout the Greater Boston area. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in Massachusetts. Sixty-five percent of the students are people of color and more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls nearly 600 international students who come from 94 countries and speak more than 75 languages.