Kate Vinson Selected as NEH Summer Scholar by National Endowment for the Humanities

Kate Vinson, Visual Arts Instructor

May 30, 2024

Kate Vinson, Visual Arts Instructor, has been selected as an NEH Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool to attend one of 43 summer teacher workshops supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Endowment is a federal agency that, each summer, supports these enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities, and cultural institutions so teachers can study with experts in humanities disciplines and strengthen place-based humanities teaching.

“The opportunity to participate in NEH Professional Development is an exciting way to connect across disciplines to teaching colleagues from across the country as well as broadening my learning in topics that are historically and culturally valuable to the arts and beyond,” said Vinson.

Kate will participate in a Landmarks of American History and Culture workshop entitled “Forever Wild: The Adirondacks in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era”. The one-week program will be held at SUNY Cortland’s Camp Huntington at Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks, NY. Camp Huntington is the first Great Camp of the Adirondacks and is listed on the New York State and National Registry of Historic Places. The workshop will be directed by SUNY Cortland Professors Randi Storch and Kevin Sheets.

The 30 teachers selected to participate in the program each receive a stipend of $1,300 to cover their travel, study, and living expenses.

Since 2012 alone, these programs have reached more than 11,000 teachers, ultimately enriching the classroom experience for an estimated 2 million students.

Kate Vinson began teaching at Perpich in 2018. Kate hails from Michigan where she began a career in Outdoor Recreation, specifically Adventure Education, where she taught students of all ages in experiences from Ropes Courses, Sea Kayaking, Elderhostel, and Outdoor Education. She came to Minnesota for M.S. in Experiential Education and received her Art Education License at the same time. She has taught in a variety of Art Education settings such as: Museum Education, Adult Education, Arts in Adult Day Care Programs, and K-12 Schools. Vinson is a practicing artist with a focus on sculpture using fibers/organic materials to create contemporary forms. She has received a Jerome Foundation Project Grant through the Textile Center of Minnesota and participated in several mentor/protégé experiences with local arts organizations as ongoing artistic development.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States. NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers. NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars.

Since 1965, the Endowment has opened new worlds of learning for the American public with noteworthy projects such as:

• Seven thousand books, 16 of which have won Pulitzer Prizes, and 20 of which have received the Bancroft Prize.
• The Civil War, the landmark documentary by Ken Burns viewed by 38 million Americans
• The Library of America editions of novels, essays, and poems celebrating America’s literary heritage
• The United States Newspaper Project, which cataloged and microfilmed 63.3 million pages of historic newspapers, paved the way for the National Digital Newspaper Program and its digital repository, Chronicling America
• Annual support for 56 states and territories to help support some 56,000 lectures, discussions, exhibitions and other programs each year