Swarthmore's Institutional Relations (IR) office assists faculty and administration apply for grants that support institutional priorities, especially those that align with President Smith's vision for the future of Swarthmore College. These grant proposals usually represent a collaborative effort that reflects the interests and goals of many parts of the College. Below you will find profiles of recent grant-funded projects.
- The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts: Rosine 2.0 (2022)
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The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts provided extended support to deepen artist engagement through extended residencies; enhanced public exhibitions through the addition of artist-led participatory activities; and brought the Rosine 2.0 project into conversation with national contemporary art discourse through public programs and an exhibition catalog. Rosine 2.0's mission is to develop artistic works and a community-based archive in order to facilitate harm reduction. These socially engaged works serve as a lense through which others can understand Philadelphians involved in marginalized communities and street economies.
- Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust: Scott Arboretum (2021)
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The Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust supported the upgrade of the Scott Arboretum's plant records and mapping system. The mission of the Scott Arboretum is to delight, educate and inspire visitors to enjoy the many benefits of horticulture. The "garden of ideas" features plant varieties that thrive in this region, encourage wise stewardship as well as the cultivation of plants to sustain the body, enchant the eye, and sooth the spirit.
- The Mellon Foundation: leadership-development program for faculty in the arts and humanities (2020)
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The Mellon Foundation's grant expands a pilot program on academic leadership with a focus on diversity. The grant supports the College’s vision for a leadership-development program for faculty in the arts and humanities from underrepresented institutions of higher education. The program “seeks to reframe academic leadership as an extension of humanistic study, research, and teaching."
- The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage: Rosine Association 2.0 (2020)
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The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage's grant helped Swarthmore to create the Rosine Association 2.0, an “interdisciplinary collective of artists, harm-reduction leaders, archivists, and women involved in today’s street economies, such as drug use, sex work, and trafficking.” The mission of Rosine 2.0 is to facilitate harm-reduction through the development of artistic works and a community-based archive. These socially engaged works serve as a lens through which others can understand Philadelphians involved in marginalized communities and street economies.
- The Presser Foundation, Renovation of the Presser Room in Lang Music Building (2020)
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The Presser Foundation's generous grant helps Swarthmore to renovate and re-purpose the Presser Room as part of the comprehensive renovation of Lang Music. The Presser Room will be converted from a tiered choral rehearsal room to a more versatile space which will accommodate performance groups such as the gamelan ensemble. A new window will provide natural light and provide views of the neighboring Crum Woods.
- National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Strategic Alliance Matching Grant Program (2019)
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Project Director: Adam Hertz, Marian Ware Director of Athletics, Physical Education, Recreation
The NCAA grant will help Swarthmore Athletics hire a new Assistant Director of Athletics, Internal Operations. The Division III Strategic Alliance Matching Grant Program is designed to provide financial assistance to Division III conferences and member institutions committed to enhancing ethnic minority and gender representation in mid- to senior-level intercollegiate athletics administrative positions.
- National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): Digitizing the Sound and Sight of American Women’s Work for Peace and Justice (2019)
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Director: Wendy Chmielewski, Peace Collection curator
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection will digitize, catalog, and transcribe 650 audio and visual recordings of women activists involved in peace and social justice movements dating from the 1930s to the late-twentieth century.
- Samuel Rubin Foundation: Digitizing U.S. Anti-Nuclear Movement Audio-Visual Materials in the Peace Collection (2018)
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Director: Wendy Chmielewski, Peace Collection curator
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection received a 3-year grant from the Samuel Rubin Foundation to digitize audio and video recordings on the anti-nuclear movement. In 2019 the Peace Collection will begin digitizing some of these recordings, including the work of Women Strike for Peace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Hague Appeal for Peace, and others documenting work against nuclear weapons. The recordings will be available via the Internet Archive.
- Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR): In Her Own Right: The Many Faces of Women’s Activism, 1820-1920 (2018)
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Project Director: Celia Caust-Ellenbogen, Archivist, Friends Historical Library
The Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) today announced that member library Temple University has been awarded a $496,000 grant on PACSCL’s behalf from the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives initiative of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for its project “In Her Own Right: The Many Faces of Women’s Activism, 1820-1920.” Swarthmore will digitize materials from the Friends Historical Library.
- The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: Strengthening Interdisciplinary Departments and Programs (2017)
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Project Director: Provost Thomas Stephenson
Swarthmore College is the recipient of a grant of $800,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create two new tenure-track faculty positions in humanities or humanistic social science-based interdisciplinary departments and programs. The grant will advance one of the four priorities of the Changing Lives, Changing the World campaign, “Connecting the Liberal Arts,” in an effort to bridge and couple disciplines across the curriculum.Swarthmore College is the recipient of a grant of $800,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create two new tenure-track faculty positions in humanities or humanistic social science-based interdisciplinary departments and programs. The grant will advance one of the four priorities of the Changing Lives, Changing the World campaign, “Connecting the Liberal Arts,” in an effort to bridge and couple disciplines across the curriculum.
- Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR): Preserving Audio and Visual Materials from the Vietnam War (2017)
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Project Director: Wendy Chmielewski, Peace Collection curator
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection has received a grant of $44,000 from the Council on Library and Information Resources' Recordings at Risk program to preserve materials related to the Vietnam War. The grant project is entitled: Debating the Vietnam War: Film and Audio Recordings from the 1960s and 1970s.
- The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage: Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary (2017)
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Project Directors: Katie Price, Assistant Director for Co-Curricular Programming and Outreach at the Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility, and Peggy Seiden, College Librarian
Swarthmore College's Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary project will bring together book artists and members of Philadelphia’s Iraqi and Syrian refugee communities to create artists’ books that amplify personal narratives of displacement, immigration, and sanctuary. Working in partnership with the immigrant and refugee service organization Nationalities Service Center, Swarthmore will invite a group of refugees to work with three book artists and participate in multi-day workshops designed to provide access to new creative tools, and to explore various aspects of visual storytelling, artistic expression, and craft. Follow the Friends, Peace, and Sanctuary project online on Twitter and the project website.
- The Panaphil and Uphill Foundations: Frances Velay Summer Research Fellowship Program (2016)
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Project Directors: Tomoko Sakomura, Provost, Dean of Faculty, and Professor, Art History; Joseph Derrick Nelson, Associate Professor, Educational Studies and Chair, Black Studies Program.
The Panaphil and Uphill Foundations support the Frances Velay Science Research Fellowship Program. In 2016, this funding provided Swarthmore with ten summer fellowships and has since grown to support 15 fellowships annually. Foundation support encourages and supports women’s leadership in the sciences by offering undergraduates the opportunity to develop and direct summer research projects that will prepare them for graduate study and professional careers in science fields. This program was created to honor the memory of longtime Philadelphia resident Frances A. Velay (1914–2007) who earned an M.S. in Chemistry from NYU in 1947.
- Henry Luce Foundation Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE): A Collaborative Approach to Enhancing the Study of Asia and the Environment throughout the Tri-College Curriculum (2015)
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Project Director (Swarthmore): Haili Kong, Professor and Section Head of Chinese, Modern Languages & Literatures
Following the success of the LIASE-funded pilot courses on water and governance, Swarthmore will design two additional environmental courses in China, one of which will focus on tea. We aim to maximize student access to this experiential learning opportunity by doubling the number of students participating in each China travel course from five to ten. This project is part of a holistic vision for expanding and integrating opportunities for the study of Asia and the environment throughout the Tri-Co curriculum, developed by the Provosts and East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC), Asian Studies, and Environmental Studies (ENVS) consortium faculty.
- National Science Foundation: REU Site: Building Digital Tools to Support Endangered Languages and Preserve Environmental Knowledge in Mexico, Micronesia, and the Navajo Nation (2014)
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Project Directors: K. David Harrison, Professor and Chair of Linguistics; Theodore Fernald, Professor of Linguistics; Brook Lillehaugen, Assistant Professor of Tri-College Linguistics
This project facilitates collaborative research between indigenous linguists in the US academic community, Mexico, Micronesia, and the Navajo Nation. The project begins with a two-week intensive, hands-on training session. Students learn directly from professional linguists and indigenous language experts how to modernize, digitize, and expand endangered languages into new technological domains. In weeks three and four, students work in teams led by indigenous language experts to record basic and specialized lexica, folk taxonomies, toponyms, and ethno-biological nomenclature. They document the knowledge base in each language and learn current best practices in sustaining indigenous languages and supporting global language diversity.
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD): Strengthening Sponsored Research Infrastructure and Faculty Development at Swarthmore College (2014)
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Project Directors: Tania Johnson, Director of Sponsored Programs; Thomas Stephenson, Provost and James H. Hammons Professor of Chemistry; Joel Cooper, Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO); Aimee Johnson, Professor and Department Chair of Mathematics and Statistics
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) selected Swarthmore College to receive a five-year Biomedical/Biobehavioral Research Administration Development (BRAD) Award to enhance its support for faculty research. This project seeks to ensure that the growth of Swarthmore's faculty is supported by a proactive Sponsored Programs office strengthened by efficient pre-/post-award administration and compliance strategies and tools and backed by clear institutional policies in a campus culture that recognizes the infrastructural needs that make research excellence possible. This capacity-building will, in turn, increase research and mentoring opportunities for students interested in health-related fields.
