Wheaton wins Davis, Mars grants

Wheaton College has been awarded two grants totaling $450,000 to support key programs that extend and enhance the student experience. The Arthur Vining Davis Foundation has granted the college $200,000 to sustain the Office of Service, Spirituality and Social Responsibility (SSSR), and the Mars Foundation has awarded a $250,000 grant to increase the summer research opportunities available through the Mars Faculty/Student Research Fellowships Program.

The Davis grant will establish an endowment for the Office of SSSR, which broadens the Wheaton experience by supporting students in their exploration of moral, ethical and religious matters from a multicultural and multi-faith perspective. Wheaton students have expressed interest in exploring a spiritual dimension of their lives as part of their development during the college years. Through SSSR, they have opportunities to learn about different faith traditions, contribute to the community through service, develop civic leadership skills and engage in responsible debate on contemporary social issues.

In its first 18 months, the office has sponsored or collaborated on a variety of initiatives including multi-faith services; a discussion series titled Beyond Common Ground, which brings together students of diverse political perspectives; celebration of world religious occasions such as Ramadan and the Hindu festival of Holi; a display of the AIDS memorial quilt and guest speaker for World AIDS Day; service projects for local non-profit organizations; and a student-organized trip to help rebuild neighborhoods in New Orleans. The office, guided by Associate Dean Vereene Parnell, has worked closely with students on all projects.

"This grant from the Davis Foundation gives SSSR roots, grounding this budding program in the institutional life of the college," said Parnell, adding that the grant-seeking process was a collaborative effort by SSSR, President Ronald Crutcher, Dean of Students Sue Alexander, college development staff, faculty and students.

The grant from the Mars Foundation will allow the college to expand one of its most important collaborative research programs, the Mars Faculty/Student Research Fellowships Program. The funding will augment the endowment for the program, which provides stipends for faculty and students to work closely together on summer research projects. Since its inception in 2000, the program has funded more than 50 faculty-student projects on topics such as vernal pool ecology, planetary systems, socio-cultural dimensions of preschool cognition, effects of environmental enrichments in older captive chimps; and the family papers and diaries of Eliza Wheaton, a founding mother of the college.

Now in its eighth season, the fellowship program fosters both joint faculty-student research and continuing faculty scholarship in which students are employed as researchers. The fellowships are in high demand, and in recent years the program has been able to fund only about 50 percent of the faculty-student teams that apply. The Mars Foundation's endowment grant will enable the college to underwrite a greater number of these creative research projects in future years.