Past Programs
The Whiting Foundation’s long history of support for the humanities includes three previous grants: the Public Engagement Programs, Dissertation Fellowship, and Teaching Fellowship.
These programs provided critical resources for individual scholars, positioning recipients to advance knowledge and understanding across fields as diverse as classics, history, musicology, anthropology, philosophy, and literary studies.
Public Engagement Programs
From 2016 to 2023, the Foundation offered Public Engagement Fellowships and Seed Grants to celebrate and empower humanities faculty who embrace public engagement as part of their scholarly vocation. They funded ambitious, often collaborative projects to infuse into public life the richness and nuance that give the humanities their lasting value. Taken together, the work of these grantees and other public humanities helps cultivate communities of practice dedicated to this form of service; underscores just how essential history, philosophy, and the study of the arts are in helping us absorb the news of the day, participate as citizens, and live meaningful lives; and ultimately broadens understanding of the value of advanced work in the humanities.
Dissertation Fellowship
Beginning in 1973, the Whiting Dissertation Fellowship recognized excellence in humanities scholarship by helping to launch the careers of outstanding graduate students. Recipients of the Fellowship, given at Bryn Mawr, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale, have gone on to make important contributions within the academy; in some cases, they have translated their expertise into careers beyond higher education, as curators, composers, arts administrators, and business leaders. The 2014-15 Fellows were the final cohort in this program.
Teaching Fellowship
Between 2001 and 2013, the Whiting Teaching Fellowship was awarded to junior faculty at our partner public and liberal arts colleges: Baruch College, Bates College, Brooklyn College, and Kenyon College. This Fellowship recognized exceptional teaching, providing junior faculty with time and funding to advance their research.
Mrs. Whiting was devoted to the humanities in the broadest sense of the word. She was not only generous in giving them her financial support, but was always ready to volunteer her personal help as well in those fields where she had become a connoisseur.