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Vassar College

Institutional Grants update

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Community-Engaged Intensives in the Humanities (2019-2023)

  • Lisa Kaul, co-PI, Director of the Office for Community Engaged Learning 
  • Bill Hoynes, co-PI, Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Sociology
  • Tom Pacio, Director of Community Engagement in the Arts

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $900,000 grant to Vassar College to help implement curriculum enhancements designed to engage students and faculty with people and organizations in Poughkeepsie and surrounding communities.  Funding began July 1 2019 and continues through August 2023. The money will be used to foster and support innovations in the curriculum called “Community-Engaged Intensives in the Humanities,” (CEIH) including the arts, languages and humanistic social sciences. The new courses will be designed to cultivate lasting collaborations among Vassar students, faculty and local residents, businesses, government agencies and nonprofit groups throughout the Hudson Valley. Vassar’s Office of Community-Engaged Learning (OCEL) will play a central role in working with faculty and community groups to design and implement these courses. For more information, please contact OCEL@vassar.edu.

Vassar College LIASE Program (2017-2020)

  • Yu Zhou, PI 2017-2019, Professor of Geography 
  • Fubing Su, PI, 2019-2020, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science

Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation’s Luce Initiative of Asia and Environment (LIASE) Program with supplemental grants from Vassar, the Vassar College LIASE program organizes a series of activities to promote the understanding of Asia in environmental studies and provides infrastructure and opportunities for Asian and American scholars to learn from each other.  Students are encouraged to apply to the annual summer research workshop in China for collaboration between Chinese and American environmental scientists and students; the summer language scholarship to support science students in learning Chinese; the curriculum workshop to infuse Asian environmental content into existing science, social science, and humanities courses; as well as student conferences featuring their work.  The grant started in September 2017 and will extend through September 2021. For more information about summer research opportunities please contact Fubing Su (fusu@vassar.edu).  For more information about curriculum development and student conferences, please contact Professor Yu Zhou, professor of Geography and Asian Studies (yuzhou@vassar.edu).  

Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education (CFMDE) (2018-2021)

  • Maria Hoehn, PI, Professor of History on the Marion Musser Lloyd '32 Chair of History and International Studies
  • Brittany Murray, Coordinator for Research and Pedagogy
  • Matthew Brill-Carlat, Consortium Coordinator
  • Margaret Edgecombe, Consortium Co-Coordinator

The Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education (CFMDE) is a collaboration between Vassar, Bard, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence colleges that aims to create a shared curriculum in Forced Migration Studies. It will offer rigorous, community-engaged courses across all campuses, as well as develop scholarly conferences, lecture series, teaching labs, student-initiated projects, international study, and research opportunities.  Faculty and students at Vassar are encouraged to apply for funding for innovative new semester- or year-long projects that further CFMDE’s goal of developing a proposed correlate in Forced Migration Studies. Contact migrationconsortium@vassar.edu for more information.

RECENT GRANT NEWS: A recent outcome of the CFMDE collaboration is a Special Issue on Forced Migration – published by EuropeNow, the digital platform of the Council for European Studies (CES) – entitled Narration on the Move and edited by Dr. Brittany Murray and Matthew Brill-Carlat '19.  Take a look at the Campus Spotlight on Vassar, which features research, community work, and teaching innovations by VC faculty and students. CES has partnered with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education, and this is the second issue on forced migration that our Vassar team has produced. (Click this link to the first special issue in March 2019, which introduced the work of the Consortium.)

Faculty contributors are Brittany Murray (IS), Nancy Bisaha (History), Tracey Holland (LALS), and Eva Woods (HISP). Former and current Vassar student contributors are Matthew Brill-Carlat '19 (History), Lauranne Wolf '20 (History), Ava McElhone Yates '21 (History), Desmond Curran '19 (History), and Elise Shea '19 (IS and French). Vassar alum Amy Kaslow '81 (commentary section on Life After War: Disturbed) also contributed as did Vassar spouses Jan Müller (New Americans documentary on summer program, Eva Wood's spouse) and Charles Geiger (Visual section on climate change and migration, Maria Höhn's spouse).

Engaged Pluralism Initiative (EPI)

  • Candice Lowe Swift, co-PI, Associate Professor of Anthropology
  • Bill Hoynes, co-PI, Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Sociology

The Engaged Pluralism Initiative (EPI) is an evolving community initiative co-sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and Vassar College, to reimagine what it means to live, work, and learn together, especially for the most vulnerable members of our community.  EPI is committed to attracting, supporting, and retaining a strong and inclusive campus community by viewing all manners of social differences as essential components of a strong community, rather than as challenges to overcome.  Students are encouraged to become involved by participating in an EPI working group, submitting a proposal to EPI Thrive!, and attending World Café events.  Contact epi@vassar.edu for more information. 

HHMI Grand Challenges

  • Jodi Schwarz, PI and Program Director and Professor of Biology
  • Chris Bjork, Assistant Director for Grand Challenges Curriculum and Professor of Education
  • Jan Cameron, Assistant Director for Grand Challenges Faculty Development and Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
  • Tom Pacio, Grand Challenges Interdisciplinary Coordinator  

Vassar’s $1 million grant from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is transforming its curriculum with the aim of attracting and retaining more students who are traditionally underrepresented in the sciences.  Across the five-year project period, the college is training faculty and developing a science curriculum that enables “clusters” of students and faculty to engage in a comprehensive study of “Grand Challenges,” such as climate change and public health issues that have a global impact.   The Grand Challenges program provides pathways to student leadership by providing opportunities through a student advisory group, by working with Departments to offer teaching intern positions, by supporting research and other experiential work, and by promoting and supporting student initiatives and organizations. For more info, please contact Jodi Schwarz (joschwarz@vassar.edu) or Madelaine Pelletier (mpelletier@vassar.edu).

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