UMD launches $2.5 million paid internship program for humanities majors

Hundreds of University of Minnesota Duluth humanities majors will get paid experience in Duluth-area nonprofits under a new $2.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, a move meant to turn internships into a real path into the local workforce.

UMD announced the program, called Humanities in Action, on Jan. 27, 2026. The five-year effort will be housed in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences inside the Hub for Integrated Learning and Leadership, known as The HILL, and is designed to fund paid internships for hundreds of undergraduate humanities majors.

The university says it will build the internships with area nonprofit organizations working on food security, healthcare, ecological justice, disability services, youth and aging services, community development, sovereignty and water justice. That matters in Duluth and across St. Louis County because these groups often need extra hands but may not be able to afford paid positions on their own, leaving students with unpaid opportunities that can be out of reach.

UMD Chancellor Charles T. Nies said the grant will create “significant and enduring benefits” for students and programs. Interim dean Jennifer Brady said the effort is meant to support equity and access in the region and to affirm the humanities as a path to careers.

For students, the payoff is straightforward: paid work instead of choosing between earning money and building experience. For local nonprofits, the program should widen the pool of interns they can bring in, while helping UMD keep more humanities students connected to the Duluth-area labor market after graduation.

The grant also shows Mellon continuing to push paid work-based learning in the humanities. In April 2024, the foundation awarded $25 million to five public colleges and universities to create similar internship programs, and in July 2025 it said its Higher Learning grantmaking was helping humanities undergraduates access paid internships in their fields.

For UMD, this is the second major Mellon gift in the past two years. In 2024, the university received $500,000 for a three-year project on environmentally sound food justice solutions. Together, the grants point to a larger shift at one of Duluth’s biggest institutions: use paid internships to open doors for students who might otherwise be locked out, while feeding talent into the organizations that keep the region running.