Houston Community College - Southwest College

Cynthia Millis Awarded NEH Grant

HOUSTON-Cynthia Millis, artist and instructor in the Houston Community College (HCC) Southwest Fine Arts Department, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study at the Newberry Library in Chicago this summer.

Millis will participate in the Reading Popular Cartography Institute sponsored by the library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography. Twenty-five university faculty nationwide were invited to apply for the 5-week summer institute intended to foster an interdisciplinary appreciation of the nature and impact of maps and mapping in popular culture. Participants will collectively discover and explore the relevance of popular cartography to their own courses and research. The stipend will defray travel, housing, and research expenses.

Applicants from the humanities and social sciences who are involved primarily in the instruction of undergraduate students were encouraged to apply in the hope that they will design materials and teaching modules to be incorporated into their courses. The Institute members will develop a web resource.

Millis will design presentations for her art history lectures and the HCC Global Studies Program. She also plans to develop an art installation based on the experience. Millis credits Dr. Elaine Adams for sharing the application

Millis has been with Houston Community College since 1982--as a student, music instructor, first box office and publicity manager for the Heinen Theatre, art history instructor, and visual artist--both as an adjunct and full-time instructor.

A 1985 graduate of the Commercial Art/Media Technology program of
HCC, the three-time recipient of the Bedichek Educational Grant started the Southwest College digital art course at Southwest College.

She wrote the text for the CD-ROM Art in Houston supported by an early HCC Instructional Technology (IT) grant and designed the Fine Arts Department web pages during an HCC IT Summer Fellowship program.

As a visual artist, Millis has exhibited her work in Chicago, at the Rockport Art Center, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and at numerous faculty exhibitions within the HCC system. Her most recent major exhibit, "Inconclusive: A Journey with Lymphoma" was curated by Darryl Lauster at the HCC Northline Gallery last spring.