The UNCG Humanities at Work (H@W) program, funded by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation, provides exceptional paid internships to undergraduate humanities majors.
Students in the program work in small teams with local community partners to learn how to leverage their valuable humanities degree beyond the classroom. Throughout the experience, students have the time, resources, and guidance to explore the meaningful work that their UNCG humanities degree prepares them to do.
Humanities at Work offers an innovative approach to the internship experience. The hands-on, project-based internships support the partner sites in their vital missions to enrich the Greensboro community. This year-long experience involves five hours working with the partner organization each week and a collaborative and experiential course that provides students with mentorship, time, and course credit for investing in their future.
Year 1 Update
Year one of the program — a time of building and testing the program — has been a success. The leadership team developed the program from the initial proposal, recruited 17 students (exceeding our 15-student goal), and placed four student cohorts in local nonprofit organizations. Student interns represented nine humanities disciplines. Each cohort worked on a specific project. From organizing historical buttons and creating an exhibit at the Greensboro History Museum to supporting food distribution and youth involvement at Abundant Life Ministries, the inaugural class of H@W students were hard at work learning about community, professional opportunities, and how their efforts connect to a UNCG humanities education.
Community Partners
Our community partner organizations provide a range of services. Collectively, their efforts address education, food security, poverty, immigrant and refugee communities, historical preservation, art and arts education, youth mentoring, and environmental sustainability.
Year 1:
- Abundant Life Ministries
- Greensboro History Museum
- UNCG Special Collections and University Archives
- Weatherspoon Art Museum
Year 2:
- Abundant Life Ministries (returning)
- Center for New North Carolinians
- Deep River River Keepers
- Every Campus A Refuge
- The Fisher Projects
- Greensboro History Museum (returning)
- Growing the Distance
- Jay Mack Community Foundation
- North Carolina African Services Coalition
- UNCG Special Collections and University Archives (returning)
- United Way of Greater Greensboro
- Weatherspoon Art Museum (returning)
Student Voices from our Pilot Experience
What our students are learning about community:
“This week reminded me that true community work goes beyond what’s required — it calls for extra effort and personal commitment. Whether it’s staying a little longer to help someone, preparing more intentionally, or volunteering to step in where others won’t, the most impactful moments often happen in those ‘extra’ spaces. Taking initiative has helped me build stronger connections and shown others that I genuinely care. I now understand that sustainable community impact depends on people willing to go the extra mile, not just do the bare minimum.”
— Elijah Young, International and Global Studies
Perspectives on financial independence:
“Another personal milestone is financial independence. Coming from a background where I’ve had to take on significant financial responsibility, including paying tuition, commuting across cities by bus, and helping with household groceries, I’m determined to build a future where I can thrive, not just survive. Part of that includes working with integrity and giving back to the communities that raised me.”
— Bosola Banjo, Philosophy, ‘26
Identifying new opportunities:
Hana Ishige ‘25, English has worked at the Weatherspoon Art Museum (WAM), supporting efforts to making digital tags for museum holdings more legible and searchable for the general public. Hana also supports editing efforts at WAM, which has given her experience that she hopes to take into the realm of publishing. Hana has been chosen for a prestigious editing internship with Sigma Tau Delta journals — and is the first student from North Carolina to have been selected for this role.
“For me, interning with H@W/WAM has opened a floodgate of different avenues of professional work, especially for someone who is an English major – elevating my communication and writing skills, which will be transferable to jobs that I might’ve never considered before.”
— Hana Ishige, English, ‘25
Skills for many contexts:
“As I step into the next chapter of my academic and professional journey, H@W has given me the confidence to trust my path, the skills to communicate with purpose, and a deepened commitment to using the humanities to advocate for change.”
— Megan Wilson, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures ‘25
Mars Stephens, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major, holds a 1979 political campaign button during internship work at the Greensboro History Museum. The GHM cohort learned how to handle such objects, organized buttons for the museum’s collection, researched the history of the events featured on the buttons, and built a public history display with which the community can engage.
Aims for Year 2
Humanities at Work is growing! A major year 2 goal is to have 50 students participate in the experience. We have already exceeded our aim of having 10 partner organizations and are actively onboarding 12 local nonprofit partners. Significantly, in Year 2 we will begin to run the program as a full academic-year experience.
Year 2 will also be a time of building toward even larger goals. We will be developing curriculum for UNCG humanities students who are fully online, and we aim to expand the program to 150 students working at 30 partner organizations. We are also actively assessing the program and working toward a sustainability plan that will allow H@W to live beyond the horizon of the Mellon grant.
Budget
It is a point of pride for the H@W program that the lion’s share of the grant funds will go directly to our students at UNCG. In our first year, we funded 16 one-semester internships at $2500 per student. The $40,000 in student stipends represents about 13% of our budget as we established the program. Next year, the internship payments ($250,000 for 50 year-long internships at $5000/student) represent 42.5% of our annual budget, and by the 5th year, 250 paid internships will total 1.25 million, which will equate to 81.5% of our projected budget.
UNCG Career and Professional Development (CPD) director, Dr. Megan Walters, talks to interns about discussing their resume with potential employers at a weekly Agora lab. CPD is a key partner of the H@W program.
Innovations and Impact
A key innovation of the H@W program is its inclusion of an interdisciplinary curriculum, which provides needed time, space, and engagement as students draw connections between their internship, their UNCG education, and their plans for meaningful work. This curriculum is unparalleled for college-level internships and enables visits from on-campus and off-campus partners.
Selected Guest Speakers:
- Mary Herbenick, Director, Guilford Nonprofit Consortium
- Raven Ferguson, Education Programs Manager, National Humanities Center
- Alyse Knorr, Chair of English Dept, Regis University, Denver, Colorado
- Dr. Kristy Wittman Howell, Associate Director, Institute for Community & Economic Engagement, UNCG
- Dr. Hewan Girma,faculty African American and African Diaspora Studies, UNCG
Leadership Team
Dr. Heather Adams
Principal Investigator and Faculty Director
Dr. Jennifer Feather
Principal Investigator
Dr. Maura Heyn
Principal Investigator and Associate Dean
Dr. Lauren Shook
H@W Internship Coordinator
