Calling all potential Smithsonian Faculty Fellows!!!

The theme for our 2018 Montgomery College-Smithsonian Faculty Fellowship year has been made official: We The People: American’s Grand and Radical Experiment with Democracy. This signature program of the Paul Peck Humanities Institute offers faculty an unparalleled professional development opportunity and will take place over two semesters, Spring and Fall 2018, marking the 21st year of this highly successful program.

While this theme has been in the works for a few years, clearly it is a timely one. Our country is undergoing a period of intense challenge and reexamination as to our core values. What do we mean by American democracy?  What do we want for ourselves as a people and as a nation? How do we go about achieving these ideals?

Having the opportunity to spend a year with a cohort of faculty drawn from all three campuses and across disciplines will provide you with an intellectually challenging and dynamic learning community that will benefit you professionally and personally. It will provide you with time-tested ways to stimulate critical thinking and academic growth in your students through using museums and objects as teaching tools. Along the way you will make friendships with faculty members you have gotten to know for the first time.

The Spring semester will be spent preparing for visits to a number of Smithsonian museums, where seminars will be led by curators who are world-class scholars in their respective fields. The Fall semester will be spent developing assignments and projects that are relevant to both your academic discipline and our theme. These will be combined with field trips to the Smithsonian.

The newly opened exhibit, Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith, at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), will be our starting point, complimented by visits including, but not limited to the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of the American Indian.

A more complete description of the program and application process can be found by going to the PPHI website: https://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/EDU/Department4.aspx?id=69089

We hope you will consider applying! Deadline for application is Monday, October 16, 2017 at 5 p.m.