Concordia Receives Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant

Concordia has been awarded $800,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This four-year grant will be used to support initiatives in the arts and humanities that contribute to the college's strategic objectives for diversity, community engagement, and transformational learning beyond the classroom.

Key projects supported by the grant include the establishment of a Center for Community Engagement that will facilitate the relationships and the administrative arrangements between the college and its community partners in education. 

Grant funds will also support faculty development opportunities related to excellence in the forms of teaching and learning required to reach the college's goals for diversity and to support projects in which students work alongside partners in the community. 

Funds will also support a diversity review of the arts and humanities curriculum. Finally, the grant will support projects that engage the Fargo-Moorhead community with the arts and humanities events that take place on campus.

"The funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation enables us to move forward more quickly to enhance students' education beyond the classroom and to improve the ways in which we ensure that students encounter at Concordia the complexity and diversity of the world they will graduate into," said Dr. Eric Eliason, dean of the college and vice president for academic affairs.

"A new center for community engagement will offer needed support for both Concordia and its partners in the region to create and benefit from work together," Eliason said. "We look forward to the opportunity to use these stronger relationships to invite more of the community to see, to understand, and to support the important role the arts and humanities play in enriching the lives of individuals and communities."

 

(10943/aek/ee)