Enduring Questions Pilot Course Grants | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Enduring Questions Pilot Course Grants program (Funding Opportunity Number 20110915-AQ) is a discretionary grant opportunity designed to help colleges, universities, and other eligible public entities create a new undergraduate course organized around a single "enduring question." The core idea is to strengthen intellectual community on campus by bringing students (and, in the larger spirit of the program, teachers) into sustained conversation with major humanities texts and thinkers across long stretches of time, including perspectives that reach into the present day. Rather than emphasizing quick coverage of many topics, the program favors depth: careful reading, discussion, and reflection that lets students see how different eras and traditions wrestle with the same fundamental human problems.

An "enduring question" in NEH terms is a big, foundational question that no single discipline can claim as its own and that typically predates modern academic fields. It is a question thoughtful people can engage regardless of career path or background, and it is open-ended in the sense that it has more than one plausible, compelling answer. These questions also tend to be naturally attractive to students because they connect intellectual inquiry to lived experience and moral, civic, or existential concerns. The announcement provides illustrative examples such as: What is good government? What is the value of work? What is friendship? What is evil? Are there universals in human nature? What are the origins of the universe? The list is not meant to limit applicants; NEH also points applicants to sample funded projects as additional models of what counts as a strong enduring question.

The grant primarily supports the work of faculty in designing, preparing, and assessing the new course. Course development can be undertaken by one faculty member or a small group of faculty (up to four). A key condition, though, is that the course is not to be team-taught. Instead, the course must be built around a common syllabus and then taught multiple times during the grant period: each participating faculty member who helps develop the course must offer it at least twice. This structure is meant to ensure the course becomes a real, repeatable part of the curriculum rather than a one-time special topic, while also encouraging consistency and shared intellectual aims across sections or instructors.

Although the program is housed in the humanities, NEH explicitly allows the course to be led by faculty from any humanities department or even from outside the humanities (examples given include astronomy, biology, economics, law, mathematics, medicine, and psychology), as long as humanities sources are central to the course. In practice, that means the reading list and the intellectual backbone of the class should be grounded in humanities materials such as philosophy, history, literature, religion, ethics, political theory, or related humanistic traditions, even if the enduring question also touches scientific, social scientific, or professional perspectives.

Beyond course design and assessment, the grant funds can also support related activities that deepen faculty-student intellectual community. The announcement mentions ancillary activities like visits to museums and attendance at artistic or cultural events, which can help students connect the guiding question to cultural artifacts, public humanities spaces, and shared experiences outside the classroom.

In terms of funding basics, the award ceiling listed is $25,000, with no stated award floor, and the program does not require cost sharing or matching. The CFDA number is 45.163 (Promotion of the Humanities - Professional Development). Eligible applicants include a range of government entities and higher education institutions, including public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, state, county, city or township governments, special district governments, and federally recognized Native American tribal governments. The posted date for this particular notice was July 14, 2011, with an original and current closing date of September 15, 2011, and an archive date of October 15, 2011.

For official guidelines and fuller details, NEH provided an information link to http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/EnduringQuestions.html and a program contact point through the Enduring Questions Division of Education Programs at NEH (enduringquestions@neh.gov, 202-606-8380).

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