The Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) will celebrate the graduation of The Odyssey Project’s class of 2008. Cheryl Johnson-Odim will give the keynote address.

The Odyssey Project is a free, eight-month program of college-level humanities courses for people living in poverty. Students in the class of 2008 took classes from September through May at the North Kenwood/Oakland Charter School on the South Side and at the Howard Area Community Center in Rogers Park on the North Side.

Cheryl Johnson-Odim, IHC Board Member, is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Dominican University in River Forest. Previously she was Professor of History and Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Columbia College Chicago and prior to that she was Chairperson of the History Department at Loyola University Chicago and also taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Johnson-Odim has a doctorate in history from Northwestern University and was a Fulbright Fellow in Nigeria. She just completed a term on the Board of Directors of the American Council of Learned Societies, previously served on the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association, and continues to serve on the Advisory Board of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Women’s History. She is also currently chair of the Joan Kelly Prize Committee of the American Historical Association. She is a founding member of the Vivian G. Harsh Society of the Carter G. Woodson Library, among other community activities, and is the author of two books and numerous journal articles, as well as a published poet. The mother of three children — Chaka, Rashid, and Maya — she lives in Evanston with her husband, Carlton Odim.

Refreshments will be served.

This event is by invitation only. For more information or an invitation, please call Amy Thomas Elder at 312.422.5580.