Odyssey Project recognized for embodying "Spirit of Education"

CHICAGO — The Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) has been awarded a Spirit of Rogers Park Award by the Rogers Park Community Council. The IHC received the 2003 "Spirit of Education Award" for the Odyssey Project, a free, eight-month program of college-level humanities courses for people living in poverty. The courses are offered in North and South side Chicago locations and one Springfield, Illinois location. This year the North Side Odyssey Project course was held at the Howard Area Community Center in Rogers Park.

An awards presentation ceremony will be held on Saturday, May 17th at 7:00pm in the Lederer Room of Congregational Emanual, 5959 N Sheridan Road. Thomas Balázs, the coordinator for the Odyssey Project in Rogers Park, will attend the ceremony and accept the award on behalf of the IHC.Now in its eleventh year, the Spirit of Rogers Park Award has been awarded to over 230 organizations and individuals that have made significant contributions to the Rogers Park community.

Founded on the theory that engagement with the humanities can offer a way out of poverty, the Odyssey Project, in partnership with the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, offers course participants 110 hours of instruction in four humanistic disciplines. Students explore masterpieces in literature, art history, moral philosophy, and United States history. Writing instruction is also an integral component of the coursework. Syllabi and reading lists for the project are roughly equivalent to those a student might encounter in a first-year humanities survey course at a first-rate university. Tuition is free; books, childcare, and transportation vouchers are provided. Bard College in New York grants a certificate of achievement to any student who completes the course and six college credits to those completing it at a high level of performance. Next year’s Odyssey courses will begin in September 2003 at sites on the South Side, the North Side, and in Springfield, Illinois.

For more information about the Illinois Humanities Council or the Odyssey Project please call (312) 422-5585 ext. 225 or visit www.prairie.org.

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