The University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) is proud to announce that it has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture and humanities, to support the creation and implementation of a paid internships program for humanities undergraduate majors.

“This generous grant from the Mellon Foundation will create significant and enduring benefits for our students and programs, and we are deeply grateful,” UMD Chancellor Charles T. Nies, PhD, said. “By embedding paid, community-engaged internships into the student experience, Humanities in Action will strengthen UMD’s role as a regional partner, contribute to community well-being, and affirm the humanities as a powerful pathway to purposeful, fulfilling careers.”

The goal of Humanities in Action is to partner with area nonprofit organizations to create and fund paid internship positions. These partners—from among the region's hundreds of nonprofit organizations—will be those working to address a wide range of pressing issues, including food security, healthcare, ecological justice, disability services, youth and aging services, community development, sovereignty, and water justice. By removing cost barriers for these organizations and creating paid positions for students, this program will unlock a larger workforce for these frontline nonprofits, while opening a new avenue of experiential learning for UMD students.

The establishment of the Humanities in Action program within UMD’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) will create a centralized and dynamic internship center that will provide paid internships to hundreds of undergraduate humanities majors over the five-year grant period. Located within CAHSS’s Hub for Integrated Learning and Leadership (The HILL), Humanities in Action represents a major expansion of UMD’s efforts to offer meaningful, career-building experiential opportunities that increase access, inclusion, and equity for humanities majors.

“The driving force behind this effort is two-fold: To support equity and access in our region, and to advance the humanities as a rewarding and relevant path for students to achieve their personal, academic, and professional goals,” Jennifer Brady, interim dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, said. “Bringing these two missions together is something UMD has been building towards in recent years, and Humanities in Action will provide the means to solidify and advance this effort in a truly transformative way, both for our students and the health of our city and region.”  

Organizations interested in learning more about partnering with UMD and UMD students with an internship through Humanities in Action can contact Dean Brady at [email protected].

This is the second major gift UMD has received from the Mellon Foundation in the past two years. In 2024, UMD was awarded $500,000 to support a three-year project that engages community members around environmentally sound food justice solutions. The resulting Community-Engaged Food and Environmental Justice Studies Hub was launched in 2025 with the guiding initiatives of academic programming, community mobilization, and knowledge curation.

Student internships through Humanities in Action will begin in Fall 2026.

Image Captions: Header - The domed roof of Weber Music Hall is a signature of the University of Minnesota Duluth campus skyline. Insets - UMD students volunteer at area non-profit Food Forward, preparing meals for those in need.