— Making an Impact with the Humanities —
Discover how the arts and humanities intersect with Civic and Community Engagement, Industry and Enterprise, Education and Lifelong Learning, and Research and New Knowledge to drive innovation and societal impact. Culture—creating it, studying it, sharing it—is at the heart of the humanities. Its value to our quality of life is undeniable.
But what about problem-solving—tackling complex, real-world challenges? How can the arts and humanities help build more equitable and ethical businesses or design sustainable solutions? What happens when they collaborate with other disciplines to solve problems?
Humanities Works shares the stories of people using the skills and knowledge of the humanities to meet real-world challenges and create better solutions.
Video Transcript
[Soft instrumental music]
VOICE 1:
A core component of the humanities is the ability to think critically, to understand and take perspective from others who are unlike ourselves.
VOICE 2:
The questions of how we grow as humans, how communication encourages us to identify in one way or another—that’s what really got me into the humanities.
JOHN CHRISTMAN:
Everything we think about in everyday life—social issues, but also just everyday life issues—has a question or an issue behind it that is something humanities scholars study.
One of the biggest misconceptions about the humanities is that they’re useless and that they’re purely scholarly.
CLARENCE LANG:
To the extent that we’re driven by imperatives about what appears to be practical, the humanities certainly can be minimized. The use value is not always immediately apparent.
[Soft instrumental music fades]
[Music shifts to a more reflective tone]
MICHELE RAMSEY:
We don’t have beakers and Bunsen burners and engineering labs, but students are still doing what they’re learning. They’re just doing it in writing, and they’re doing it in oral communication—presentations, debates, and discussions.
JOHN CHRISTMAN:
A lot of issues—from climate change to the use of vaccines and responding to the pandemic—the technical aspects of it are in hand. But getting people to understand that, and understand the social importance of it, is the work of people who communicate ideas, who develop ideas, and who grapple with some of the very difficult abstract questions that lie behind these issues.
MICHELE RAMSEY:
We need to reframe the discussion of what we teach as core skills and knowledge—essential skills, but not “soft” skills.
There’s a whole world out there of jobs, many of them incredibly lucrative and very stable, and you can get to those positions with degrees in the humanities.
CLARENCE LANG:
Many of the opportunities that they’re going to have, employment-wise, are likely going to be ones that they are going to have to generate for themselves—and that takes the kind of creativity that only the humanities can give you.
[Music shifts to a more uplifting piano theme]
JOHN CHRISTMAN:
I think the key step in responding to the problem of showing the value of the humanities is listening. Ask people what they’re concerned about and ask people what they want to know. Clearly, the things they will want to know will go beyond technology and beyond science. Then engage in a dialogue with people that brings to the fore the kinds of expertise that humanist scholars have.
MICHELE RAMSEY:
Those core skills and knowledge that you learn in the humanities really teach you how to think about everyday problems—problems in your work, in your community, and in your interpersonal life—and to think about those problems differently.
JOHN CHRISTMAN:
What I would hope people would know about the humanities is that they are engaged in it all the time. They’re thinking about history. They’re thinking about philosophy. They’re thinking about story. They’re thinking about the meaning of their own relationships, their families, their culture, and other cultures. And they’re doing that all the time in their everyday life.
[Music fades]
— Recent Humanities Works Projects —
Video Transcript
[Uplifting instrumental music]
VOICE 1:
You need to understand the medium you’re working in. That medium might be very technological, but more importantly, you need to understand the nature of the human mind—and how the technology and the psychology are going to come together to create an experience that’s going to be meaningful.
[Uplifting instrumental music builds]
[Music fades]
JESSE SCHELL:
Computer science was definitely where I started, but I have a kind of mixed background. I used to be a circus performer—I was a professional juggler for some time. I went to school for computer science and then later for computer networking, and I studied some business along the way. So it was kind of a mix—a mix of education there.
This is another advantage of my circus background. When you look at the way a circus works, you have people with these incredibly diverse skills. What it takes to walk on a wire versus what it takes to juggle versus what it takes to play musical instruments—these are all very different. You have people coming from very different disciplines, but all working together to create an experience that couldn’t be had any other way.
When you look at what it takes to make a modern video game, you need writers, painters, sculptors, animators, musicians, and business people. You need people with really, really different backgrounds—so different that nobody could understand all of them. You have to get them all to agree and pull in the same direction. You can only do that if you trust each other, and the only way to trust each other is to have respect for each other’s disciplines and abilities.
The important thing about bringing together multiple disciplines and getting them to work together to make something none of them can make alone is valuing those bridges—the ability to build bridges in between.
REAGAN HELLER:
I think that being creative is inherent to everyone. When people hear the word “creative,” sometimes they become intimidated. It’s like, “Oh, I can’t draw, I can’t paint, I can’t write a book.” But it doesn’t have to mean that.
Some of my favorite people I’ve worked with will say, “Let me try and show you,” and they’ll just make a little napkin sketch or doodle. I’ll be like, “Oh, I understand you.” Then I’ll elaborate on that and build on it. Together, that idea—from a person who didn’t feel they were an artist, with an artist backing it up—now you have that idea.
JESSE SCHELL:
When I look at the backgrounds of people who’ve been really successful as game designers, some of them have come from a very technical place. Other people come from a background in history and make games about historical events. Other people come from architecture and make their careers building games about places and spaces—building cities, building houses.
REAGAN HELLER:
That’s why we look to bring people in from diverse backgrounds—different industries, different walks of life. Those ideas are going to make our product stronger. We encourage people to share their perspectives and experiences because, in the end, we’re making experiences for other people. Those experiences are stronger when different perspectives and different voices contribute to them.
JESSE SCHELL:
Good ideas can come from absolutely anywhere. Building a culture where the habit is “How do we connect everybody together and share ideas across these bridges?”—that’s the fastest way to create meaningful, successful creativity for any organization.
The important thing to realize is that everything is rooted in the human experience. What does it mean to be a person? The only point or purpose of any technology—of anything you might create—is for that human experience. You can focus on just the technological side if you want to, but you really risk having it fail to connect with the people it’s meant to engage.
REAGAN HELLER:
Communication—visually and in text—should be something that we value more. Whatever your role is, it’s fundamentally important to collaboration, to teaching and growing the people around you, and to innovating and getting ideas across.
JESSE SCHELL:
“Get your inspiration from everywhere else”—that always stayed with me. It was certainly true for me as a juggler, and I found it true for everything I learned afterward.
I learned a tremendous amount that’s been relevant to making computer games from doing performances. You learn how to interact with an audience, how to read an audience, how to make sure they stay engaged to the end. If you’re losing them, you start to realize it.
When we did playtesting for games, we’d bring people in to play a new version. A lot of people would look at the screen—but I realized I needed to look at the people. I found myself using the same skill: reading when we were losing them and knowing we needed to change the game to hold their interest.
The best inspiration comes from everywhere else. How can I connect things together that no one else would have thought to connect before?
[Music builds]
People talk about Henry Ford inventing the assembly line for automobiles. How did he do that? Did he just think of it? No—someone said, “Hey Henry, we’re going to take a tour of a slaughterhouse. It’s a different kind of business—do you want to check it out?”
He goes and sees the way meat is processed, where one butcher deals with the shoulder, another with the leg, and so on. He looks at this and thinks, “Why don’t we do cars like this?” It had never occurred to anyone before. That was the birth of the assembly line. He had the open-mindedness to ask, “What’s a better way to build cars?”—and to ask a butcher. That’s not how most people think.
There are possibilities for creativity everywhere. Suddenly, everything becomes interesting because every field of study can be connected to what you care about most.
What everyone benefits from most is practice with creative problem solving—especially problem solving outside your domain. Someone with a background in English literature can get involved in designing a new airport. What do you know? What can you bring to that?
People are afraid because they think, “I don’t know anything about airports.” But what do you have to lose by having these conversations?
Creating situations where people with different backgrounds work together to solve each other’s problems is one of the most valuable things you can do. It makes you relevant to other people, and you learn something you never would have gained otherwise.
The more you think of disciplines as separate, the more you limit them. It’s easy to be intimidated by technology or by the arts, thinking that without innate talent there’s no point in engaging. None of that is helpful. You don’t need to know everything about a discipline to connect with it and benefit from it.
REAGAN HELLER:
I’d love for people to change the way they think about words that seem scary or less valuable—like creativity, arts, and humanities—versus technology, which people often associate with success.
Creative studies lend themselves to fundamental skills that we need to derive meaning from technology at all.
JESSE SCHELL:
More and more, there are opportunities to connect things through multimedia—the combination of words, pictures, animations, and psychology. That’s the best way to connect any discipline to any other discipline.
The biggest advances in this century and the next are going to come from connecting disciplines and working together. We have the ability to do things none of us could do alone.
[Music fades]
Video Transcript
[Soft instrumental music]
ASHLEY PRIORE:
My name is Ashley Lynn Priore. I’m the founder, president, and CEO of Queen’s Gambit. We’re a nonprofit organization that teaches chess to the community, and we use the game to teach empathy and leadership skills to young people.
[Music fades]
The most important thing to do when we’re starting off our chess game is to play for the center—the four center squares.
We’re teaching people how to solve problems. Even beyond chess, this can apply to writing, art, and all of the humanities. People begin to realize that critical thinking, decision-making, and creativity are at the heart of what chess is about, because you can learn so much from it.
We are teaching kids a valuable tool for strategic leadership.
SOMDATTA BASU:
One of the best pieces on the board is the queen. The queen is like a combination of the rook and the bishop.
My name is Somdatta Basu. I’m 19 years old, and I’m going to be a sophomore at Penn State. I’m studying aerospace engineering, and I have a minor in French language and culture. I speak French, and my family is originally from India—we’re from the west side of India—so I also speak two languages from there.
My eventual goal is to get an engineering job at a company like Boeing or NASA—one of the aerospace companies. Engineering, math, science, planes—that’s all stuff that I’m interested in and want to pursue as a career. But you can’t do those things without communication, and communication is really important to me. Engineers have to communicate with each other, so that’s something I aspire to apply in my career in the future.
I started teaching at Queen’s Gambit, but there was definitely a very steep learning curve for me. I was learning how to communicate advanced chess ideas to little kids, and that taught me that if I want to get anywhere, I have to keep trying, keep coming back, and keep putting myself out there.
ASHLEY PRIORE:
Even at a young age, I knew there was power in chess, given that I was able to learn how the pieces moved without having formal lessons. Another thing that stood out to me was that every chess book I saw growing up had a dad and a son on the cover—“Checkmate.” I never quite understood that.
There was always this question in the back of my head: why can’t the mom teach chess? Why can’t the grandma teach chess? That frustrated me, and I think I was just a very curious kid who wanted to dive deeper into that.
Susan Polgar used to say chess is a miniature version of life, and it really is. You’re able to practice decisions and problem solving. Chess is different from any other strategy game because, for me at least, the goal isn’t necessarily to win—it’s the thought process behind the win. How are you going to get there? That’s the most important part.
RITA RUGGERI:
How should I defend my king?
SOMDATTA BASU:
The king has a special move called castling, where the king moves two squares and the rook jumps over it. Now the king is in his own little fortress, and it’s really hard to attack him there.
ASHLEY PRIORE:
Chess is all about layers of protection around the king—that’s where the strategy comes from. When the queen was introduced—because the queen originally wasn’t part of chess and was known as the king’s advisor—she became incredibly powerful.
People realized that the queen wasn’t just protecting the king, but serving as a piece that could protect everyone. Some people think of that as a motherly figure, but over time I’ve realized you can view the pieces any way you want. What matters is that each piece is unique.
That’s what I want these kids to learn: just like each chess piece, you have your own challenges and opportunities. We need to learn to have empathy and understand how each person—or piece—can support and challenge us in our current position.
SOMDATTA BASU:
There are only 64 squares on the board, which seems limited, but in chess you can reach an infinite number of positions you’ve never seen before.
[Music builds]
When I play a game from beginning to end, it’s always about opportunity—an opportunity to make a better move. Chess has taught me that if you keep going, even when you feel like you’re losing, new opportunities will always come up.
RITA RUGGERI:
My name is Rita Ruggeri, and I’m a college freshman. Today I learned how to play chess for the first time.
The skills of focus and strategy will help me a lot in the future, so I want to continue learning how to play this game.
ASHLEY PRIORE:
As people learn and grow their chess skills, they’re also developing leadership skills—strategy, critical thinking, and problem solving. They’re learning equity and equality, self-development, and forward thinking.
The most powerful thing is that these kids are figuring out what excites them next. Every day, they’re questioning the world around them, and to me, that’s lifelong learning.
You ask questions—you ask why things are the way they are. That’s why I love chess: you’re always questioning situations and how to do better. It’s fun and engaging, but you’re working your mind in ways you don’t even realize.
When you look at the data behind chess, it builds pathways in your brain that help you process decisions faster. When I think about lifelong learning, I think about every time I’ve played chess and completely surprised myself with the strategies I was able to come up with.
[Instrumental music fades]
Video Transcript
[Groovy music builds]
VOICE 1 (singing):
♪ Come and get all the band together, people put your hands together, come on!
Yeah! Get on that train!
All together now! Help me out!
Sing it with me! Come on! ♪
JOHN VENTO:
If somebody asked me what words I would use to describe what we do at Band Together Pittsburgh and what it means to me, I would start with the word “love”—along with acceptance, support, encouragement, teamwork, and family.
It’s about people coming together with all these different talents—or, as we like to say, differently‑abled people—filled with this beautiful energy and spirit that has propelled us into growth and life‑changing experiences.
Music was in my background from the minute I was born. My mother’s family—many of them—were professional musicians going back generations. My mother’s great uncles actually performed at the opening of Forbes Field in 1909 here in Pittsburgh. Our most famous relative, Ron Anthony, was a great jazz guitarist who toured and recorded with Frank Sinatra for many years. My grandfather would come over and play the mandolin on the front porch.
Music was always a huge part of our family—never dreaming that it would be a path I would eventually take, especially one that led to Band Together Pittsburgh, which uses music to impact the lives of people on the autism spectrum.
[Music]
I never could have imagined that this would happen later in life the way it has.
An uncle once said to me, “Hey John, are you still involved with music?”
“Well yeah, of course.”
He told me his sister Lisa had an autistic son who was a really good drummer, but he didn’t have anyone to play with. I immediately said, “Why don’t we all get together at my studio in West Deer? I’ll get some musicians and we’ll have a jam session.”
I turned to his mother, Mrs. Satara, and said, “You make spaghetti and meatballs, and we’ll make it a big Sunday family thing.”
They came over and we found out this young man was quite a drummer. He was autistic and mostly non‑verbal—but he could play the drums. Through that, I met other friends who had autistic children. One played guitar, another played keyboard.
We posted on Facebook: Autism‑friendly Open Mic at Moondogs in Blawnox. In the middle of the show, I invited three young musicians—drums, keys, and guitar—to join us onstage. They played a couple blues songs with us, and they were terrific.
RON ESSER:
The people who live on the autism spectrum are not disabled—they’re differently‑abled.
JOHN VENTO:
At the end of the night, Moondog Ron Esser came up to me and said, “We need to do this more often.”
That night was the birth of Band Together Pittsburgh.
RON ESSER:
Rhythms and music are important to everybody. Even for a neurotypical person, the rhythms and movement lift your spirits and get you going. For people on the spectrum, music is a universal language that we can all understand.
JOHN VENTO:
Music is the conduit that creates social connection and enhances the lives of these individuals.
Many parents have told us their kids spent years in their bedrooms playing video games, without friends or meaningful interaction. Band Together has opened up a whole new world.
Kids who didn’t know each other three years ago are now going bowling together. Parents who didn’t realize support existed now find community with other families facing the same challenges.
That’s the most beautiful part of Band Together Pittsburgh. It’s not about musical perfection or flawless performances—though we have phenomenal musicians. Mostly, music is fun, expressive, and an opportunity to enhance lives.
We started with teenagers, but now we have participants in their 40s and 50s as well.
A typical monthly open mic draws over 100 people, including families, with 20 to 25 performers. We see new faces all the time. Some of our bands now perform at schools or have their own gigs.
A Very Yinzer Christmas began as a concept to bring together Pittsburgh artists to record a Christmas album and perform a concert. It was a natural transition to include Band Together musicians.
We selected six members with more experience and brought them into the studio and onto the stage at the Benedum Center—performing in front of 2,300 people. That courage is unbelievable.
The project was a huge success and opened many doors for Band Together Pittsburgh.
In the autism community, caregivers often don’t have the resources to buy instruments or pay for lessons. We do both. If a student sticks with lessons for a year and their teacher says they’re committed, we gift them the instrument—whether it’s a drum kit, keyboard, guitar, saxophone, or trumpet.
That’s what success is: love, support, and opportunity.
People say we’ve helped so many people—but honestly, it’s the other way around. What these individuals have given us, how they’ve enhanced our lives and opened our hearts, is the real blessing.
RON ESSER:
I’ve seen people come out of their shells—people who never talked before suddenly saying my name. It brings me to tears every time.
JOHN VENTO:
Visit our website, bandtogetherpgh.org, and you’ll see our vision and mission statements—created by students at Penn State Greater Allegheny.
Our mission is to impact the future of people using music as a conduit—building self‑confidence, socialization, and skill sets that ripple into families, communities, and schools.
This experience has taught me that we can all be change agents. We start with acceptance, kindness, love, and support—and people blossom.
[Groovy music builds]
[Applause]
“Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells man his purpose in this life.”
— Areas of Engagement —
Civic and Community Engagement
The contributions of the humanities are essential to the functioning of a democratic society, but what do those contributions look like and how do they impact civic life? From crowd-sourced public histories to advocacy and action-oriented curricula, these stories highlight initiatives that use the humanities to build informed civic engagement.
Industry and Enterprise
Humanities-based skills and knowledge are essential to a wide range of professions, helping to shape trends and drive innovation. As creativity, persuasion, and communication continue to top the lists of employers’ most highly sought-after skills, these stories highlight the impact of a humanities education for successful teams and industry leadership.
Education and Lifelong Learning
Humanities skills such as communication, critical thinking, cultural knowledge, and creativity are essential to human development and to enhancing quality of life throughout our lives. These stories highlight innovations in humanities curricula and student engagement, and profile the ways in which the humanities disciplines contribute to education and lifelong learning.
Research and New Knowledge
Humanities scholars study historical texts, art, languages, histories. These investigations reveal truths about our experience in the present, as much as they inform us of human experience in the past. Stories in this section will highlight researchers who explore the unknown through humanities methodologies and in collaboration with other disciplines.