$1.5 Million Grant Funds Public Humanities Initiative With Albina Vision Trust • Newsroom • Lewis & Clark
Source: http://www.lclark.edu/live/news/58034-15-million-grant-funds-public-humanities
Archived: 2026-04-23 17:13
$1.5 Million Grant Funds Public Humanities Initiative With Albina Vision Trust • Newsroom • Lewis & Clark
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$1.5 Million Grant Funds Public Humanities Initiative With Albina Vision Trust
$1.5 Million Grant Funds Public Humanities Initiative With Albina Vision Trust
“Face-to-Face” public humanities programs, funded by the Mellon Foundation, will bring Albina neighborhood residents, community partners, and L&C students and faculty together to address social justice, environmental justice, and cultural concerns.
Educational Hub
April 14, 2026
President Robin Holmes-Sullivan (left) and AVT Executive Director Winta Yohannes at an Albina Vision Trust partnership event at Lewis & Clark.
Credit: Nina Johnson
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Lewis & Clark and Albina Vision Trust are launching an ambitious new chapter in their partnership, backed by a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. The funding will support “Face-to-Face,” an initiative that connects Albina residents with Lewis & Clark students and faculty through for-credit courses, research, and creative projects, as well as a summer institute. The award recognizes Lewis & Clark as a national leader in transforming college curriculum and extracurricular activities to better engage and serve the broader community.
For many years, Albina was a thriving neighborhood that was home to 80 percent of Black Portlanders. But decades of discriminatory “urban renewal” policies, including redlining, freeway expansions, eminent domain, and more recently gentrification, have displaced residents and disrupted community bonds. In 2025, Albina Vision Trust, a community-driven nonprofit dedicated to reinvigorating and nurturing the neighborhood with housing and services to center and reroot Black residents, announced
a multiyear partnership
with Lewis & Clark to co-create an education and economic empowerment hub in Albina.
Face-to-Face is central to this effort. Lewis & Clark students and members of the community will participate together in a track of five new collaboratively designed and taught courses in public humanities, along with workshops, creative productions, and a speaker series—all addressing topics central to Albina.
Programming will include an innovative four-week York Summer Institute for the Study of Place. Using interdisciplinary methods and working with community experts and L&C faculty from a variety of fields, institute participants will examine the Indigenous history of the land Portland occupies; the Lewis & Clark expedition and its legacy; the history of race in Oregon; and current challenges in the region. While colleges elsewhere in the country have undertaken similar efforts to explore their institutions’ relationships to slavery, the York Summer Institute will be the first such effort to address the relationship between higher education and Indigenous dispossession, with particular attention to how that dispossession ripples through more recent policies such as redlining to contemporary urban issues in the Pacific Northwest.
“The Mellon Foundation’s investment underscores that humanities skills, including inquiry, collaboration, research, reflection, creativity, and compelling communication, remain central to solving real-world problems,” notes
President Robin Holmes-Sullivan
. “They’re called the humanities because they are what make us human. Machines and AI cannot replicate or replace the kind of thinking and action needed for communities like Albina, and all of Portland, to flourish.”
“We chose Lewis & Clark as our education partner because they share our belief that education must be woven into the fabric of community,” says
Winta Yohannes
, executive director of Albina Vision Trust. “Too much of Albina’s history has reflected the destruction resulting from discriminatory urban policies, including destroyed homes, businesses, and community resources. Face-to-Face is about co-creating knowledge and opportunity through the understanding that our shared grasp of history can help us create a future brighter than our past.”
Lewis & Clark has an established record of creating community-engaged courses, often centered on projects that inform policymaking, provide expertise to local nonprofit service providers, preserve community resources, or directly serve community members. The Mellon grant will deepen these efforts with a sustained focus on the Albina Vision Trust partnership, expanding community-based knowledge and strengthening educational opportunities for Albina residents.
Albina Vision Trust
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Shelly Meyer
Media Contact
Lois Leveen
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Apply
Visit
Alumni
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Libraries
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The Source
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Home
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$1.5 Million Grant Funds Public Humanities Initiative With Albina Vision Trust
$1.5 Million Grant Funds Public Humanities Initiative With Albina Vision Trust
“Face-to-Face” public humanities programs, funded by the Mellon Foundation, will bring Albina neighborhood residents, community partners, and L&C students and faculty together to address social justice, environmental justice, and cultural concerns.
Educational Hub
April 14, 2026
President Robin Holmes-Sullivan (left) and AVT Executive Director Winta Yohannes at an Albina Vision Trust partnership event at Lewis & Clark.
Credit: Nina Johnson
SHARE
Copy Link
Lewis & Clark and Albina Vision Trust are launching an ambitious new chapter in their partnership, backed by a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. The funding will support “Face-to-Face,” an initiative that connects Albina residents with Lewis & Clark students and faculty through for-credit courses, research, and creative projects, as well as a summer institute. The award recognizes Lewis & Clark as a national leader in transforming college curriculum and extracurricular activities to better engage and serve the broader community.
For many years, Albina was a thriving neighborhood that was home to 80 percent of Black Portlanders. But decades of discriminatory “urban renewal” policies, including redlining, freeway expansions, eminent domain, and more recently gentrification, have displaced residents and disrupted community bonds. In 2025, Albina Vision Trust, a community-driven nonprofit dedicated to reinvigorating and nurturing the neighborhood with housing and services to center and reroot Black residents, announced
a multiyear partnership
with Lewis & Clark to co-create an education and economic empowerment hub in Albina.
Face-to-Face is central to this effort. Lewis & Clark students and members of the community will participate together in a track of five new collaboratively designed and taught courses in public humanities, along with workshops, creative productions, and a speaker series—all addressing topics central to Albina.
Programming will include an innovative four-week York Summer Institute for the Study of Place. Using interdisciplinary methods and working with community experts and L&C faculty from a variety of fields, institute participants will examine the Indigenous history of the land Portland occupies; the Lewis & Clark expedition and its legacy; the history of race in Oregon; and current challenges in the region. While colleges elsewhere in the country have undertaken similar efforts to explore their institutions’ relationships to slavery, the York Summer Institute will be the first such effort to address the relationship between higher education and Indigenous dispossession, with particular attention to how that dispossession ripples through more recent policies such as redlining to contemporary urban issues in the Pacific Northwest.
“The Mellon Foundation’s investment underscores that humanities skills, including inquiry, collaboration, research, reflection, creativity, and compelling communication, remain central to solving real-world problems,” notes
President Robin Holmes-Sullivan
. “They’re called the humanities because they are what make us human. Machines and AI cannot replicate or replace the kind of thinking and action needed for communities like Albina, and all of Portland, to flourish.”
“We chose Lewis & Clark as our education partner because they share our belief that education must be woven into the fabric of community,” says
Winta Yohannes
, executive director of Albina Vision Trust. “Too much of Albina’s history has reflected the destruction resulting from discriminatory urban policies, including destroyed homes, businesses, and community resources. Face-to-Face is about co-creating knowledge and opportunity through the understanding that our shared grasp of history can help us create a future brighter than our past.”
Lewis & Clark has an established record of creating community-engaged courses, often centered on projects that inform policymaking, provide expertise to local nonprofit service providers, preserve community resources, or directly serve community members. The Mellon grant will deepen these efforts with a sustained focus on the Albina Vision Trust partnership, expanding community-based knowledge and strengthening educational opportunities for Albina residents.
Albina Vision Trust
Office of Communications
Editorial Contact
Shelly Meyer
Media Contact
Lois Leveen
More Stories
Legal Leap
An Accelerated Path to Law School
Persistence is paying off for Danielle Pon BA ’24, JD ’27, who is currently attending Lewis & Clark Law School as part of the accelerated “3-3” BA/JD program.
Education Improvement
Ben Bowman Joins L&C as Senior Fellow
Bowman will work closely with Graduate School leadership and faculty and with partners across the state to scale the school’s impact and expand the use of data and research to improve outcomes in Oregon K-12 schools.
Faculty Award
Dr. Kosansky Receives Fulbright for Rabat Genizah Project
Associate Professor Oren Kosansky has received a prestigious Fulbright award for his project, “Digital Humanities Scholarship and Jewish Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Morocco”. Building on his extensive background in anthropology and Moroccan studies, this project bridges the gap between Middle East and North African (MENA) studies and Jewish studies.
Community Brew
Bringing Latinx Culture to Portland’s Coffee Scene
Carlos Sanchez Huizar BA ’18, MA ’20 has turned his love of coffee and his experience at Lewis & Clark into Kilo D’ Cofi, a Latinx-owned café and community space in downtown Portland.