Public Humanities and Arts Program
The Public Humanities and Arts (PHA) program is a University of Dayton program focused on public-facing community engagement through the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community.
The PHA program is the intentional collaboration of University of Dayton faculty, staff and students with diverse communities and public-facing organizations to engage, strengthen and support shared goals in the humanities and the arts for the common good. This work includes, but isn’t limited to:
- Engaged Public Programming: This work includes public programming in which the primary objective is not to transfer knowledge but to cultivate an exchange between facilitators and participants concerning matters of shared interest in the humanities and arts;
- Engaged Research: Often referred to as community-based, participatory, or action research and includes research initiatives in which higher education faculty and students partner with community members in the co-production of creation of knowledge, activities, performance, and practice;
- Engaged Teaching: This includes higher education instruction involving engaged research, teaching, and public programming, where engaged teaching projects integrate community engagement within the curriculum;
- Collaboration with Public-Facing Organizations on Outreach: Partnering with community organizations to share scholarly programming and media around the humanities and arts to a general audience; and
- The Infrastructure of Engagement: The university invests in research and institutional structures that support engaged scholarship and community-engaged activities.
The Five Goals for UD's Public Humanities and Arts were developed and adapted from National Humanities Alliance's "Typology of the Publicly Engaged Humanities."
