The Illinois Humanities Council (IHC) celebrates the graduation of The Odyssey Project’s class of 2009. The Odyssey Project is a free, eight-month program of college-level humanities courses for people living in poverty. Students in the class of 2009 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. Ronne Hartfield gives the keynote address.

Ronne Hartfield is the author of a biographical memoir, Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family (University of Chicago Press, 2004). She was the Woman’s Board Endowed Executive Director for Museum Education at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1990 to 1999. Hartfield was also executive director of Chicago-based Urban Gateways: The Center for Arts in Education, which is the largest private arts and education organization in the United States. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago in History, Theology and Literature.

Recorded Saturday, May 16, 2009 at Alliance Française de Chicago.