Center for Humanities in Practice (CHIP)

Our Approach

CHIP offers students the opportunity to engage in innovative coursework and experiential learning. Building on our applied programs within the School of Arts & Humanities (SAH), students can customize their curriculum with a focus on:

• Practical Application: Students are given opportunities for hands-on learning through partnerships with leading cultural institutions and our faculty networks. The experience gained through coursework brings the outside world into the seminar room.
• The Humanities Clinic: We bring together professionals who share a deep appreciation of the humanities, facilitating meaningful interactions with our students outside their coursework.
• Transdisciplinary Learning: We work with schools and disciplines across CGU, such as the Drucker School of Management and the School of Community & Global Health. This allows students to experience a more holistic approach to humanities education through collaborative coursework and projects.

Programs

Director and Founder of CHIP

Institutions We Work With

We have partnerships with institutions locally and globally, providing our students with exceptional opportunities for growth and networking. These are some of the local, national, and international partnerships we have:

• The Autry Museum of the American West
• The Wende Museum
• The Paul Gray Personal Computing Museum
• The Gamble House
• LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes
• LACMA
• Vincent Price Art Museum
• CAL Fire Museum
• The Getty
• The V&A Museum (London)
• Farmer’s Insurance
• The City of Los Angeles
• Museum of Mexican Mormon History

Student Opportunities

CHIP-Webb Fellowship
The CHIP-Webb Fellowship allows CGU students to mentor Webb Schools seniors on their research projects, enhancing their own teaching and leadership skills while supporting high school students’ academic growth.

Museum Leadership Clinics
At the Paul Gray Personal Computer Museum, advanced CGU Museum Studies students can serve as Executive Directors, managing museum operations and gaining practical experience in programming, collection management, and fundraising. Other museum leadership positions are under discussion.

Funded Internships
Students can participate in internships funded by grants and donations, working with our partner institutions on significant projects.

• Benton Museum-CHIP Fellows work directly with leaders as Pomona College’s Museum of Art in communications, curatorial or education, depending on the yearly needs of the museum.
• Mark Chapin Johnson Foundation Fellow at the Wende Museum—a yearly paid internship to work directly with the curatorial leadership team at the Wende Museum in Culver City, CA on an upcoming exhibition.

International Experiences
Travel opportunities to the United Kingdom, Italy, and other international destinations are available through courses such as TNDY 405A Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New, offering a global perspective to the humanities.

Hands-On Projects
From curatorial assistantships at Wende Museum of the Cold War to archival and digital humanities projects with historical societies to a multimedia mapping of Route 66 that has recently been named an “Official Project of the Federal Route 66 Centennial Commission”, students can lead and contribute to a wide variety of meaningful work.

Sample Coursework

Since 2010, CHIP has offered dozens of courses that allow students to work with innovative industry partners and leaders, all of whom possess graduate degrees in the humanities but have deployed that training in academia and the wider world.

HIST 315: Museums, History and Storytelling
In partnership with the Autry Museum of the American West, this course explores the issues, methods, and politics of museum exhibitions as taught by a senior curator at the Autry. With classes split between the Claremont campus and at the Autry Museum, this course engages in an analysis and display of objects, the development and design of exhibitions, museum collection practices and ethics, and other issues in curatorial practice. Students will have multiple opportunities for behind-the-scenes access and to meet with a range of Autry staff involved in museum exhibitions.

HIST 304: Introduction to Oral History
This seminar is designed to explore the field of oral history through both readings and practical experience. It will offer grounding in oral history methodology, including the basics of interview design, effective interviewing techniques, and fundamental legal and ethical issues. It will also provide an introduction to some of the more salient theoretical issues related to oral history, including how oral history functions as historical evidence, issues of social memory, and the narrative construction of life stories. This course always requires students to engage in and create their own oral history project.

CLST 408: Curating Art and Science
A partnership between CHIP and The California Institute of Technology, this course allowed students to work with Caltech’s Head of Archives and Special Collections, and an independent curator who were creating the Getty PST exhibit of art and science, which opens in Fall 2024. They examined general themes of curating art and science, and helped create aspects of the Caltech exhibition

ARCH 315: Archival Practice
Archival Studies students work with the Special Collections of Honnold Library to archive a collection recently acquired by the library. This practicum allows students who have taken the archival series of courses to apply their training under the guidance of professional archivists.

TNDY 405: Heritage, Culture and Managing the Past in the Old World and the New
This course examines heritage management of historical sites and museums in both Los Angeles and Bath, England. While in Los Angeles, students from Bath and from CGU explore important cultural heritage sites, including the Getty Villa, Watts Towers, the San Gabriel Mission, LA Plaza de Cultural y Artes, among others. In Bath, the students will use the university as a home base to explore the city, named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987, and its many museums and historical sites. In both places we focus on conversation with museum leaders, curators and site managers to discuss how they do their work, what problems they deal with and what futures they imagine for their sites for their local and national histories.

Where You Can Find Our Alumni

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  The Smithsonian Institution

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  Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles

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  Pasadena Heritage

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  Claremont Heritage

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  The 9/11 Memorial Museum

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  The National Museum of Natural History

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  Laguna Art Museum

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  The National Park Service

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  Petersen Automotive Museum

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  Broad Museum

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  Riverside Inn Museum

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  The Hammer Museum

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  Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art

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  Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

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  The Art Institute of Chicago

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  Disney Imagineering