Contact: Kyla Kruse

SPRINGFIELD — Lincoln Land Community College was recently awarded a $10,000 grant from the Modern Language Association to enhance the connection between classroom learning in key humanities courses and career-ready skills. LLCC was also the only community college to receive this distinction during the current grant cycle.

In the awarded project, “Thinking, Deciding and Connecting From Classroom to Career: Amplifying Humanities’ Durable Skills,” students will build important abilities such as critical thinking, decision-making, communication and problem-solving through hands-on undergraduate research projects. The pilot courses are being led by LLCC full-time faculty members Marlene Emmons, Karen Sisk, Eric Stachera and Cara Swafford.

Students enrolled in these courses will have an opportunity to demonstrate these skills to community workforce partners through a research symposium that will be held Dec. 10.

The project will also include the creation of digital and print guidebooks that highlight the long-term value of humanities education and show how classroom experiences can lead to career opportunities. Students in one of Professor Laura Anderson’s graphic design classes will help develop the guidebooks as part of a hands-on learning project.

“We know that students who complete courses throughout the humanities, including literature courses, build skills and experiences like critical thinking, communication and collaboration that are integral to their personal and professional development,” said Dr. Corrine Hinton, dean of LLCC Humanities, Arts, Communication and English. “Thanks to the work by our incredible faculty, this project will help students recognize and articulate those skills as they progress by using a framework exclusively developed for LLCC and directly tied to the employability skills that Illinois believes is essential to a future-ready workforce.”

To learn more about the Modern Language Association’s Pathways Step Grant projects, visit mla.org/resources/advocacy/MLA-Pathways.

To learn more about LLCC Humanities, Arts, Communication and English courses, visit llcc.edu/humanities.