Chestertown, MD, April 8, 2004 — The Kresge Foundation of Troy, Michigan, has awarded Washington College a challenge grant of $750,000 for its new 45,000-square-foot Science Center, currently under construction. The funds are contingent upon the College raising $2.8 million to support funding for the project by January 1, 2005.
“The grant from The Kresge Foundation represents a major endorsement of the College,” said Jack S. Griswold, chair of the College's Board of Visitors and Governors. “The Kresge Foundation scrupulously examines all aspects of an institution while considering a proposal. Its grant to the College is a ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval' of which we are very proud.”
“This vote of confidence from The Kresge Foundation is tangible evidence that the momentum of our highly successful Campaign for Washington's College is continuing,” said Thomas H. Gale, chair of the Development Committee of the Board of Visitors and Governors.
“Now the challenge for all of us is to build on the momentum of that magnificent effort with this new campaign for the Science Center,” added Gale.
The Campaign for Washington's College, which ended on December 31, 2003, raised $103.4 million—the largest capital campaign in the College's 222-year history and the single largest ever conducted by a Maryland undergraduate college. Funds raised are supporting a range of initiatives, from new faculty chairs, professorships, and academic programs, to scholarships, technology enhancements, new academic research and outreach centers, and new facilities such as the Science Center, which will double the size of Washington College's science teaching and research complex.
Designed to provide a lab-rich environment for supporting new and evolving models for teaching the sciences to undergraduates, the $23-million Science Center will have state-of-the-art teaching and research laboratories for biology, chemistry, environmental studies, physics, psychology, and math and computer science, as well as a vivarium to support psychological research and greenhouse on the top story.
Classrooms in the Science Center will follow a new trend in science facilities: small-group instruction rooms equipped with mobile “white boards.” A three-story glass atrium—to be named in honor of the late Washington College president, chemistry professor and alumnus Joseph McLain, Class of 1937—will connect the Center with the existing Dunning-Decker Science Complex.
The Kresge Foundation—an independent, private foundation unaffiliated with any corporation or organization—was created in 1924 by Sebastian S. Kresge “to promote the well-being of mankind.” In 2003, the Foundation awarded grants totaling more than $105 million to 145 charitable and nonprofit organizations operating in the areas of higher education, health and long-term care, arts and humanities, human services, science and the environment, and public affairs.
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