Vassar College received two grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a four-year $630,000 grant through the Liberal Arts Colleges Program and a $1.2 million challenge grant for the college”™s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.
Vassar”™s four-year grant will be used to advance the study of South Asia in the environmental studies program by adding a tenured scholar of the environmental history of South Asia, as well as enhancements in the program curriculum, new library resources, research and related travel. Â
“The history department has long needed a South Asian historian, and we are delighted that the Mellon grant gives us ”˜two for one”™ by enabling us to hire a historian in the cutting-edge field of environmental history,” said Rebecca Edwards, chairwoman of the department of history, member of the environmental studies faculty and lead author of the Mellon grant proposal.
The foundation”™s Liberal Arts Colleges Program provides grants aimed at providing additional research and professional opportunities for faculty members, strengthening the academic infrastructure of liberal arts colleges and assisting colleges as they review and refurbish curricular offerings.
The $1.2 million challenge grant awarded to the art center will help create and support a new postdoctoral position for a coordinator of academic affairs. In order to match the $1.2 million grant, Vassar must raise an additional $750,000 for the course over the next three years.
The grant is the largest received to date at the art center, according to James Mundy, the museum”™s Anne Hendricks Bass director of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.
