The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center—with leadership from John P. Murphy, The Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings, and collaboration with Kelly Reynolds, Head Registrar for Collections and Exhibitions—secured a grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation to support the conservation of a 17th century Japanese byōbu screen. The six-panel tiger screen was painted by Unkoku Toeki.
Elizabeth Cannon, Director of Community-Engaged-Learning, in collaboration with Celebrating the African Spirit and Revive College Hill Park Coalition, secured a Civic Imagination Partnership Grant from Partners for Campus-Community Engagement (PCCE). This grant will support Frederick Douglass Day, an event which continues the tradition of honoring abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
In support of Vassar’s Fearlessly Consequential campaign, the Dyson Foundation (Millbrook, NY) awarded a grant of $5,000,000 toward the modernization of Vassar’s Sport & Recreation Center. Dyson Foundation funds will support construction of the Sport & Recreation Center’s natatorium, featuring a new pool to accommodate competitive short- and long-course swimming, diving, and recreational swimming, as well as use by local schools and community organizations.
A team of Vassar colleagues secured an Ecological Restoration Grant from Partners for Climate Action Hudson Valley to support high-visibility riparian restoration at the Vassar Preserve through tree and shrub plantings.
Carol Murray, Executive Director of Wimpfheimer Nursery School (WNS) and Infant Toddler Center (ITC); BethAnn Serwatka, Site Director of WNS; and Nicole Bonelli, Site Director of ITC, secured new grant funding from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services’ Child Care Stabilization program. Funding will support teacher retention, wages, and professional development.
John Bradley, Executive Director of the Vassar Education Collaboration (VEC), received a Youth Activities & Opportunities Grant from the City of Poughkeepsie to support VEC and a Community Fund Grant from United Way of the Dutchess-Orange Region to support the Vassar English Language Learner Outreach Program (VELLOP).
This grant award will support the maintenance, operation, and securing of permanent collections of natural specimens, alongside the Preserve’s educational programs that interpret the collection. Students of all ages regularly visit each year to learn more about the Preserve’s rich diversity of plants, birds, amphibians, mammals, and reptiles.
The goals of this exciting new grant are to study the effect of Vassar’s long-standing Exploring Transfer (ET) program on community college students’ subsequent completion of four-year degrees, improve the ET program as needed, and work with other liberal arts colleges to catalyze ET-like programs that promote community college student transfer to four-year colleges.
Vassar is an awardee of the Teagle Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) joint grant program Cornerstone: Learning for Living, which seeks to revitalize the role of humanities in general education. This grant award will support conversation and planning focused on how we might use the First Year Writing Seminar (FYWS) to deepen faculty and student’s shared experience of transformative engagements with texts, the focus of the Cornerstone initiative.
