Grounded in the broad commitment to the humanities that informed the university’s genesis and that has defined its 175-year history, the FSU Humanities Center will focus the power of the humanities in driving exploration of the human: who we are, how we live, how we are influenced by our environments, and how we can shape a future in which humans flourish. The FSU Humanities Center is a laboratory for invention in which faculty, students, and the public together respond to urgent questions involving citizenship, social life, meaning, and human enterprise.
The mission of the Humanities Center accordingly is to advance research and teaching in the various fields of the humanities; build public understanding of the humanities as a visionary project about how humans can thrive; enrich the teaching of the humanities at FSU and in other partnered educational institutions and settings; foster collaborations among FSU and cultural, social, and governmental organizations; promote interdisciplinary collaborations and synergy across the humanities; pursue a digital humanities; support the research of faculty and graduate students by enabling interdisciplinary collaborations; enrich undergraduate study of the humanities; increase the national and international visibility of the humanities at FSU; and open possibilities for collaborations between the humanities and other areas of knowledge and research.
In the 21st century, a humanities center at a flagship state university must be a project that joins an ambitious intellectual agenda with recognition of the practical economic and social benefits that come with a humanities degree. The FSU Humanities Center will position itself as an ongoing project of intellectual leadership as well as an undertaking committed to fine-tuning the study of the humanities in ways that equip humanities graduates to navigate a wide range of work and career environments. In Florida, humanities graduates — compared to all college graduates — provide the largest percentage of persons in the fields of legal work, office and administrative support, education, and media, and their presence likewise is equal to or almost equal to all college graduates in the career fields of management, business and finance, and service and sales. The median earnings of humanities majors in Florida’s full-time workforce is $61,796 per year. That is 70% higher than the median earnings of workers with just a high school degree ($36,397). Additionally, humanities majors are consistently employable: they suffer less unemployment than business majors (3% vs. 4%) and stand equal to engineering majors (both at 3%). In short, the humanities degree is a valuable credential when measured in terms of its economic advantages. The Humanities Center at Florida State University will clarify and advance the educational mission crucial to a free and prosperous society, advantage our students, and elevate our institution by reinforcing inculcation of the applied skills and intellectual qualities that have made humanities majors a pillar of the Florida economy.