Kresge Foundation Issues $750,000 Challenge Grant For New Washington College Science Center

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.

Washington College's Center For The Environment And Society To Develop Rural Communities Leadership Program 2002-2003

Pilot Program Will Support Sustainable Rural Economy, Character for the Shore

Chestertown, MD, September 17, 2002 — The W. K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded Washington College a grant of $100,000 to develop a Rural Communities Leadership Program for the Eastern Shore of Maryland. To be conducted by the College's Center for the Environment and Society in collaboration with the University of Maryland's Institute for Governmental Service, the pilot program, beginning this fall, will become a model for creating and sustaining local leadership in order to encourage and to maintain the rural character, resource-economy and heritage of the Shore.

Widely recognized as a unique environmental and cultural region, the Eastern Shore has been a major agricultural area since Colonial times (the landscape is currently comprised of 53 percent productive farmland), but its proximity to the growing sprawl of the Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia corridor has brought related pressures to covert its rural land for development.

“Our region faces the prospect of losing its rural economy and its abundant natural resources due to developmental pressures,” said Dr. Wayne Bell, who is overseeing the project as the Director of the Center for the Environment and Society at Washington College. “The hope is that through the Rural Communities Leadership Program, we can promote the smartest of the smart growth for our region through a network of leaders who represent and are stakeholders of the Eastern Shore's communities.” This network will be grassroots, explained Bell, comprising people from various sectors of the Eastern Shore region—farmers, watermen, community planners, environmentalists, developers and builders, and business people—who understand the region's special sense of place and can coordinate their activities on a regional and local level.

A Community Forum scheduled for November 23, 2002, will launch the pilot program, by identifying and recommending the participants for the initial leadership program council. Beginning in January 2003, participants will meet monthly to deliberate on issues such as economics, community character, the environment and natural resources. In addition, participants will make at least one field trip to see first-hand how other communities have confronted and resolved similar challenges to those facing the Shore. As a pilot study, the participants will assist in evaluating the individual classes and overall program.

“There are two beneficial, long-term results from these leaderships programs,” said Dr. Philip Favero of the Institute for Governmental Service, who will serve at the Program's day-to-day coordinator. “First, individuals' skills and knowledge in the various issues affecting rural communities, from development to the environment, will be increased and enhanced. Secondly, and equally important, are the trusting, cooperative relationships developed between the participants that carry beyond the classes into the communities and their professional positions. This is a longer-term outcome, but one that is absolutely essential so that the knowledge gained will be the basis of region-wide action, policy and planning.”

Washington College students, joined by selected registrants from the Washington College Academy for Lifelong Learning—the college-affiliated adult education program—will participate in the Rural Communities Leadership Program through a special course, “Sustaining Rural Communities,” during the spring 2003 semester. The course and project will be integrated in several ways, but the key will be having the class meet with the program council once a month.

“This project is an example of expanded community engagement of Washington College,” said Bell. “It is a two-way endeavor that creates a professional academic resource for the Eastern Shore and enables students to learn first-hand about outside issues that will challenge them after their graduation.”

The $100,000 grant for this pilot program was W. K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, MI. Established in 1930 by W.K. Kellogg, the cereal industry pioneer, the Foundation has continuously focused on building the capacity of and enabling individuals, communities, and institutions to solve their own problems.

Computer Science Program Receives Grant from National Science Foundation for Advanced Mathematical Research

Chestertown, MD, August 27, 2001 — Washington College Department of Mathematics and Computer Science has received a $30,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project to develop a library of advanced mathematical programs. The grant is part of $280,000 in funding for a joint research project to be conducted in cooperation with the University of Delaware and North Carolina State University.

"Many researchers feel that if enough computers are unleashed on a task, they will eventually find some sort of an answer," said Austin Lobo, principal investigator and assistant professor of computer science at Washington College. "This project deals with computational tasks that are of such great magnitude, that one cannot simply wait for an answer to come--because that might take a lifetime. By developing programs using probabilistic techniques, we create software that makes intelligent guesses and reduces the time for complex calculating tasks literally from decades to days."

The goal of this project is to provide a component-based, open-source software library of advanced mathematical programs that can be used by other researchers to build and expand other mathematical computing modules. Titled "ITR/ACS: Collaborative Research-LINBOX: A Generic Library for Seminumeric Black Box Linear Algebra," the project will have applications in cryptography, data security, electrical communications, control systems and computer graphics, said Lobo. The Linbox group is composed of members from research institutions in the United States, France, and Canada and has been active for nearly three years.

"We have to prove mathematically before we begin the computations that our programs will finish the work at all and produce an answer despite their 'guesswork,' and that the answer will indeed be correct," said Lobo. "It takes years just to learn the mathematics needed to get to square one in this business."