In November, the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) announced that Wesleyan College is one of a select group of institutions to receive a NetVUE Grant for Reframing the Institutional Saga. The purpose of the award is to enable institutions to re-examine and reframe their history, identity, and heritage in light of their present context.
Since Wesleyan’s beginning in 1836 as the first college in the world to grant degrees to women, only one published work, The First Hundred Years of Wesleyan College: 1836-1936 by Dr. Samuel L. Akers, has attempted to recount its history. The NetVUE grant will provide an opportunity to create a new narrative, one that brings alive the stories of the women of Wesleyan and presents the institution as part of its larger setting. The end product of the two-year project will be a digital narrative housed on the College’s website with accompanying video and archival footage. An additional printed catalogue will serve as a permanent “snapshot” of the project as it exists at the end of the project period.
NetVUE Grants for Reframing the Institutional Saga are made possible through generous support to the CIC by Lily Endowment Inc.
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Wesleyan College has also been invited to participate in a major initiative of the University of Michigan’s Center for Social Solutions. The three-year project, funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, creates and leverages a national network of nine geographically dispersed and organizationally different colleges and universities. Each of these will partner with a community-based organization to develop tangible, research-informed solutions for racial inequities for their particular location. In addition to Wesleyan, the network includes the University of Michigan; Carnegie Mellon University; Emory University; Rutgers University-Newark; Spelman College; Concordia College in Moorhead, MN; Connecticut College; and Wofford College.
Wesleyan will receive funds to support a faculty member who will serve as principal investigator, a second faculty member to coordinate grant activities, and a local community partner. Dr. Melanie Doherty and Dr. Holly Cole will serve as faculty leads for Wesleyan College. Griffith Family Foundation Director Tonja Khabir will serve as community fellow.