Whitman & Community Partners To Co-Create Learning Experiences That Center Indigeneity, Immigration & Incarceration
A $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation will showcase the power of the humanities and create dozens of new learning opportunities
By Melissa Welling ’99
Making the humanities come alive. The Humanities for All Times grant will create opportunities for students to learn from diverse communities in the Walla Walla Valley and understand how studying the humanities can fuel real-world change. (Photo of El Color de México by Asya Johnson ’26.)
Whitman College has been awarded a $1.5 million Humanities for All Times grant from the Mellon Foundation to explore how the humanities can help solve societal challenges by creating equitable and sustainable relationships with local community partners.
The grant will be used over a roughly three-year period to co-create community-based learning experiences for students and community members centered on three areas of focus: Indigeneity, immigration and incarceration.
“This tremendous investment in Whitman and our community partners will create impactful, hands-on opportunities for students, faculty and community members to explore these critical issues together and build on relationships that are vital to our home in the Walla Walla Valley,” says President Sarah Bolton. “We’re deeply grateful to the many faculty and staff whose hard work and great ideas led to this proposal, and to the Mellon Foundation for this opportunity to innovate and expand our humanities curriculum in exciting ways that will benefit both our community and our students.”
“The initiative helps students understand how studying the humanities matters right now in this place and time.
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—Mary Raschko, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Associate Professor of English
Centering Indigeneity, Immigration & Incarceration
With the Humanities for All Times grant, Whitman will launch the Centering Indigeneity, Immigration and Incarceration Initiative, which highlights three topics vitally important to the Walla Walla Valley’s history and present. (See “Why Indigeneity, Immigration & Incarceration” below).
The initiative will create dozens of community partnerships and high-impact immersive learning experiences that center the knowledge and experiences of the diverse groups of people who call our region home.
It will strengthen collaborations like Whitman at the Penitentiary, Whitman’s Memorandum of Agreement with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and ongoing oral history projects in the local Latinx community, honoring the experiences of community partners as vital sources of student learning and creating new opportunities to deepen the college’s relationships in the region.
Advancing the Humanities at Whitman
Whitman’s three-prong Centering Indigeneity, Immigration and Incarceration Initiative will:
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Infuse local learning across the curriculum by supporting faculty development workshops, seminars, and community-engaged course development around Indigeneity, immigration, and incarceration
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Engage community partners as guest speakers, facilitators and instructors
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Involve more students in community-engaged research of importance to Whitman’s partner communities
“This initiative bolsters immersive learning experiences that students already describe as some of their most memorable at Whitman,” says Mary Raschko, Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Associate Professor of English. “The initiative helps students understand how studying the humanities matters right now in this place and time. As they engage in collaborative, relationship-based learning, they develop skills that help them make a difference in their communities beyond their time at Whitman.”
Read more about immersive learning at Whitman.
Why Indigeneity, Immigration & Incarceration?
Why Indigeneity? Whitman actively seeks to build reparative relationships with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), to honor Indigenous sources of knowledge, and to integrate them into our curriculum and community. This initiative will allow Whitman to partner with CTUIR instructors to expand course offerings and meet the growing demand for CTUIR-centered learning.
Why immigration? Immigration has shaped our community for centuries—from French Métis fur traders to Chinese immigrants who constructed local railroads to immigrants working in Walla Walla’s vast agricultural industries. This initiative will allow Whitman to scale up collaborative teaching, research and mentoring that center these important contributors to Walla Walla’s history and present.
Why incarceration? People incarcerated at the Washington State Penitentiary make up nearly 4% of the Walla Walla County population, and the facility is one of Walla Walla’s largest employers. This initiative aims to strengthen the Whitman at the Penitentiary program, in which Whitman students and incarcerated students learn together, as well as to deepen students’ learning about incarceration across the curriculum.