Our Mission

Founded in 1974, Colorado Humanities is dedicated to improving the quality of humanities education for all citizens of Colorado, providing opportunities for lifelong learning, and encouraging the application of values, wisdom, and methods of the humanities* in decision making that will influence the future of this diverse and rapidly changing region.

* The humanities include: history, literature, languages, linguistics, philosophy, jurisprudence, anthropology, and other disciplines.

Major Goals
Colorado Humanities (CH) strives to help all people of Colorado to learn about our history, our literature, and the ideas that shape our democracy; to address issues of contemporary life; and to explore and understand human values. We provide these opportunities through public discussions, lectures, historical character presentations, teacher institutes, symposia, and media.

Statewide Reach
The only statewide.organization in Colorado dedicated exclusively to support the humanities, Colorado Humanities reaches out to more than 200,000 people and 30 counties in Colorado per year through all our programs, grants, and special events.

Strong Leadership
Chair Judith Casey leads a 20-member Board of Directors comprised of individuals selected from throughout the state for their effective leadership, scholarly expertise, community involvement, and ethnic diversity that characterize Colorado. The executive director, Margaret Coval, heads a staff of seven.

Innovative Educational Programs
CH’s Teacher Institutes such as The West of John Wesley Powell, Lewis & Clark: The Journey and Its Legacy, and What is Right and Just: Ethics for a New Millennium are geared for Colorado K-12 educators and are held in partnership with colleges and universities statewide. Participants learn about historical events, extraordinary individuals and universal questions through the disciplines of history, literature, geography and philosophy. Our teacher institutes are also open to non-educators. Two institutes provide adjunct public programs featuring lead scholar, Clay S. Jenkinson, in the characters of Meriwether Lewis and John Wesley Powell. These public programs are offered without charge or for a nominal fee.

High Plains Chautauqua, an annual event held in Greeley since 2000, reaches an average of 3,400 adults and children each year. The four days and four nights of activities include first-person historical presentations (Chautauqua), hands-on intergenerational activities, storytelling, discussion groups, exhibits, and live music and entertainment. Characters at the 2002 festival included Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Emma Goldman, Henry Ford, Gertrude Stein, William Jennings Bryan, and Booker T. Washington. The event also included a daily Kids’ Chautauqua featuring hands-on historical art forms, storytelling, poetry-reading, and displays of historical artifacts. The Young Chautauquans program features high school students who have researched, studied, and learned to portray historical characters such as Napoleon, Cesar Chavez, Amelia Earhart, and the Duke of Wellington. Each year our High Plains Chautauqua is free to the public.

Informative Community Programs
Our Medical Ethics Programs, Dilemmas in Health Care (for medical professionals and the general public), and Legal Ethics Seminars (for legal professionals) are programs that offer opportunities to share concerns about medical and legal policies and practices by promoting open communication and increased understanding. The former programs which include public forums, a mock trial, a readers’ theatre and a reading/discussion series are produced in rural and urban communities statewide, in partnership with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, plus local hospitals and medical centers. The 2002 programs were held in Alamosa, Steamboat Springs and Durango.