UW Wyoming Stories Project gets support from Mellon Foundation Grant

Following the receipt of a significant grant from a prominent national foundation that supports the arts and humanities, the University of Wyoming reports they will undertake a three-year effort to gather and archive stories of everyday Wyomingites. 

During an appearance on Sheridan Media’s Public Pulse, UW Director of Institutional Communications Chad Baldwin said the Mellon Foundation has agreed to provide $850,000 to UW’s Department of English for the project, “Re-Storying the West for a Transformative Future: We Are Wyoming.” 

C. Baldwin 

This coming spring, UW’s Board of Trustees will consider plans to launch a Ph.D. program in the public humanities.

The project, led by Department of English Associate Professor Nancy Small, will support those considerations and bring campus collaborators together with community partners around the state, with the ultimate goal of creating “a living public archive” of Wyoming stories.

UW President Ed Seidel says the effort dovetails with the university’s strategic plan focus on engaging with and serving the people of Wyoming, among other objectives.

According to Baldwin, the grant will allow the Department of English to provide subgrants to faculty members on campus and create graduate assistantships and internships. This team will receive training in story-gathering methods in a series of professional development sessions.

The team members then will collaborate with community organizations to conduct story-gathering events and interviews around Wyoming. These events will not only gather stories but work to enhance relationships with the state’s community colleges, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and others. 

The stories will be archived and presented on a website, through podcasts and on other platforms.

For more on this click here. For more information about “Re-Storying the West,” email Small at nancy.small@uwyo.edu.