Academic Centers Put Knowledge Into Action
Sumiko Martinez
The College of Humanities houses seven dynamic academic centers that serve as intellectual hubs on campus and beyond. Academic centers are essentially “concentrations of expertise that provide value-added programming to the university and the public,” according to Associate Dean Isabel Moreira. These centers share something remarkable: putting humanities disciplines into action in the world through a focus on world-class research engagement, community partnerships, and hands-on student opportunities.
Attend any of their events, and you’ll find a common thread woven through their unique missions—each one bridges the gap between scholarly research and community need, between university resources and public service, between theoretical understanding and practical application. Whether they’re preserving oral histories, teaching languages critical to national security, or building pipelines between underserved communities and the university, these centers prove that the humanities aren’t just about understanding the world—they’re about changing it.
Two National Resource Center Designations
For over a decade, the Asia Center and Center for Latin American Studies have both held prestigious National Resource Center designations from the U.S. Department of Education—a competitive recognition that acknowledges their excellence in language and area studies serving national interests. This federal recognition underscores how these centers contribute not just to Utah’s educational landscape but to the United States’ capacity for global engagement.
Shared Impact Through Focus
While each center is unique in its own right, with some leaning heavily into scholarly community and research and others emphasizing community partnerships or student engagement, they share several common elements.
The Seven Centers in Brief
American West Center
Founded in 1964, what began as a novel idea to study Western history has become the nation’s premier repository of Western voices and public-facing history of the American West. With over 7,000 oral histories including more than 2,000 interviews with Native Americans, the center works in partnership with tribal nations to preserve cultural heritage while training the next generation of public historians. Paisley Rekdal, director of the American West Center, says, “This makes our collection one of the rarest and most notable in the nation, and certainly among higher educational institutions and centers.”
Current projects include major collaborations with mining industry heavyweight Kennecott-Rio Tinto, numerous tribal nations, the Department of Energy, and the National Park Service. Rekdal elaborates on the details: “Of our most current public history projects, I’m most proud of the work that we’re doing on the Kennecott-Rio Tinto’s Groundbreakers site,
to help them create a dynamic, digital archive about the cultural impact of mining in the West. I’m also excited about the oral history interviews our researchers are conducting with Shoshone-Bannock Tribal elders as part of a collaborative project between the AWC, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, and the Department of Energy about the land use practices of Shoshone and Bannock peoples and their ancestors in the Snake River Plain. Finally, our researchers are also spearheading the Historic Trails project, sponsored by the NPS National Historic Trails Office in Santa Fe, helping to build a coalition of tribal partners and land managers to improve the interpretation of Indigenous history along the Utah segments of three national historic trails (California, Pony Express, and Mormon Pioneer).”
Asia Center | National Resource Center
Serving as a hub on campus, this center coordinates Asia-related programming across the university while building Utah’s pipeline for expertise in many different Asian languages. Through partnerships with K-16 schools statewide, the center ensures students across Utah can graduate as fully bilingual, culturally competent global citizens ready for international careers. With funding from private foundations and federal grants, it’s creating the multilingual workforce Utah needs for events like the 2034 Olympics and beyond.
Cindi Textor, director of the Asia Center, says, “The U’s Asia Center is rare among its peers for its broad coverage of Asia. Going beyond strengths in East Asian Studies, our affiliates boast expertise in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Russia, and the Pacific. This allows our faculty and students to chart previously under-explored interconnections among the diverse nations and cultures of the Asia-Pacific region and our own communities here in Utah.”
Center for Latin American Studies | National Resource Center
Connecting 76 faculty across 31 departments, the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) is a designated National Resource Center that turns academic expertise into educational opportunity. The center’s partnerships with institutions like Salt Lake Community College and organizations like Artes de México en Utah directly support Utah’s dual language immersion program while recruiting underrepresented students into international education. Its interdisciplinary approach tackles everything from tropical biology to Indigenous studies to Latino diaspora research. CLAS is particularly strong in Mexico, the Andean region, and Brazil, as well as the promotion and teaching of indigenous languages and cultures.
Alejandro Quin, director of the Center for Latin American Studies, says, “We offer the most comprehensive and nationally-recognized Nahuatl language program in the United States, in addition to the only MA program in Latin American Studies in the state of Utah. CLAS is also deeply engaged with the local community: We partner with K-12 and SLCC educators, sponsor pedagogy workshops, and provide support for the Portuguese and Spanish Bridge Programs for Utah high school students. We also collaborate regularly with local Latin American consular offices and Latiné nonprofit organizations on a variety of community initiatives.”
Middle East Center
Preparing students for careers in an interconnected world, the center emphasizes both language competency and cultural understanding. Its programs are designed to create global citizens who understand the complex relationships between the Middle East and the United States, combining area studies with professional skills that serve both national interests and personal career goals.
Chris Low, director of the Middle East Center, highlights the ways the center serves the community on campus and beyond: “First and foremost, our affiliated faculty members teach a wide variety of courses touching majors in
Middle East Studies, History, Political Science, World Languages and Cultures, International Studies, and many more units across campus. The Middle East Center also serves as the point of contact between our faculty and the wider Middle East Studies scholarly community, bringing renowned scholars from across the nation and the world to campus. And finally, I’m especially proud of how our faculty respond to breaking news and crises in the region. From Israel and Iran to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, our experts are regularly called upon to provide timely analysis and perspective to local civic groups, television, print, and radio outlets.”
Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center
Founded in 1988, the Tanner is a nationally regarded center that supports academic research, public engagement, and educational programming in the humanities. Notable programs include the long-standing Tanner Lecture series for the campus and community, reading groups, fellowships, and professional development programs for educators. New additions to the Tanner’s programming include a podcast and an innovative team research fellowship program called Tanner Labs.
Scott Black, director of the center, says, “The Tanner Humanities Center is unique among humanities centers across the country in combining extensive public humanities programming with a robust fellowship program.
Most other centers focus on one or the other, but thanks to Obert C. Tanner’s generous sustaining vision, we are able to bring some of the most interesting and important writers, thought leaders, and scholars to Salt Lake City while also supporting a vibrant community of faculty and graduate student fellows pursuing innovative scholarship. I am most excited now about our new model of research support, Tanner Labs, which combine experimental, interdisciplinary team-based scholarship with fresh pedagogical practices and innovative forms of public engagement.”
Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Education Center
In Montana’s ecologically significant Centennial Valley, this unique center bridges arts, humanities, and sciences to tackle environmental challenges. Students, faculty, and community members collaborate in a setting that Montana Natural Heritage Program rates as one of the state’s most significant natural landscapes, combining pristine wilderness with cutting-edge environmental education.
As Mark Bergstrom, director of the Taft-Nicholson Center, describes, “A humanities perspective provides a variety of tools that allow us to reflect on
and make sense of complex environmental issues that cross disciplinary boundaries while also providing tools that allow us to work collaboratively with other disciplines. The center provides a space to train ourselves and our students to make sense of the world from a variety of perspectives, to do so in a critical and informed way, recognizing different positions and perspectives, considering the moral and ethical implications and outcomes of not only our actions but our thoughts as well. We train ourselves and our students to clearly communicate our understandings in collaborative and effective means.”
Second Language Teaching and Research Center (L2TReC)
This center serves everyone from Utah high schoolers to military intelligence officers. L2TReC coordinates the nation’s top Bridge Program for advanced language learning, serving thousands of Utah students annually. The center also maintains one of only 10 prestigious Department of Defense Language Training Centers, providing advanced cultural and language education to military linguists in areas of strategic importance. In addition, L2TReC houses two of the world’s largest non-English learner corpora, providing researchers the opportunity to study a high volume of authentic language produced by actual learners of the language, revealing what really happens during the process of learning, and producing valuable insights for K-12 teachers to strengthen their instructional practices.
Devin Jenkins, director of L2TReC, says, “L2TReC makes an impact across the state through our nation-leading Bridge language program, which serves upwards of 5,000 dual-language high school students. We have also had a national impact over the past 12 years with our Department of Defense Language Training Centers, of which we are one of only 10 in the country. We provide research corpora of language learners for linguists who do research on dual immersion. What we teach goes well beyond language mechanics, as our programs enable multicultural insights and skills among researchers and students from a variety of backgrounds. What we teach changes lives, and lasts a lifetime.”