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1/10/00

FORD FOUNDATION AWARDS SLU GRANT FOR COLLABORATIVE STUDY 

CANTON, N.Y. - The Ford Foundation has awarded St. Lawrence 
University a grant of $350,000 to continue to work 
collaboratively with Trent University in Canada and the 
University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago on a 
project studying the relationships between geographic areas 
and the global movement of people, capital and cultures across 
geographic borders.
	Through the project, faculty at all three institutions 
will investigate and compare the influence of Africa, Asia, 
Europe and indigenous peoples within the United States, Canada 
and the Caribbean from a transnational, multicultural and 
interdisciplinary perspective.
	Specific activities to be funded through the grant 
include curriculum and faculty development seminars; team-taught 
summer institutes for students; a series of inter-institutional 
faculty/student collaborative research, creative and curricular 
projects; and a progression of inter-institutional courses or 
course modules concurrently taught and linked via the Internet.
	The total cost of the new project is $450,000; St. Lawrence, 
in collaboration with its partner institutions, will provide the 
additional $100,000 of funding needed to implement the programs.
	The project began with a grant from the Ford Foundation 
in 1997, as part of a new initiative called "Crossing Borders: 
Revitalizing Area Studies." Its purpose was to promote new thinking 
and new practices in the teaching and scholarship of area studies, 
both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and to provide a 
culturally sensitive context for efforts to internationalize 
research and the curriculum.
	"I'm extremely excited by the work proposed through this 
grant from the Ford Foundation," commented St. Lawrence University 
President Daniel F. Sullivan. "We have seen on our campus a 
tremendous outcome from the first grant for this project, namely, 
the initiation of a Global Studies program which will serve to 
strengthen each of our area studies programs and link them together 
through cross-cultural and transnational comparisons. The initial 
Ford Foundation grant led directly to the award of a $1 million 
grant from the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation that will 
fund five new faculty positions to link and compare geographic 
areas in a global context. The project funded through this new 
grant will be significantly enhanced by our new Global Studies 
initiative, and, in turn, this grant from the Ford Foundation 
will help inform and strengthen our work in Global Studies. We 
are grateful to the Ford Foundation for their renewed support, 
which is helping us accomplish so much."
	On behalf of Trent University, President Bonnie M. Patterson 
said, "This grant, and the collaborative research that it will 
enable, are warmly welcomed by our university, its faculty and 
students. Interactions with collaborating partners to date have 
been very productive and have stimulated discussions about many 
exciting future initiatives. We are pleased to bring the considerable 
expertise of our faculty to this research program." Trent is located 
in Peterborough, Ontario, and ranked that Canadian province's best 
primarily undergraduate university.
	Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Compton Bourne - Campus Principal, 
the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, said, "The University 
of the West Indies is extremely pleased by the Ford Foundation grant, 
which is intended to support a joint program of curriculum and faculty 
development seminars, collaborative research and the development of 
multicultural curriculum and studies by the three partner universities, 
namely St. Lawrence University, Trent University and the University 
of the West Indies at St. Augustine. We attach high value to 
internationalization of scholarship and learning to the contribution 
of interdisciplinary studies to a fuller understanding not only of 
today's world but of the future."
	The Ford Foundation has supported other curricular initiatives 
at St. Lawrence, including a strengthening of the African studies 
program, which was supported with a grant in 1990.

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