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12/4/00

ROCKEFELLER BROTHERS FUND AWARDS GRANT TO ST. LAWRENCE

CANTON -- St. Lawrence University has been awarded a grant of $290,000 
from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, to assist in integrating Geographic 
Information System (GIS) technology into the Global Studies Program and 
the Integrated Science Education Initiative (ISEI).
	The grant will help provide funding for faculty development and 
training in the use of GIS technology; curriculum development to incorporate 
GIS technology into existing and new courses; staffing and evaluation of 
outcomes.
	St. Lawrence University President Daniel F. Sullivan said, "We are 
very grateful to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for assisting us in this 
important endeavor. We share a commitment to preparing our students to be 
productive world citizens, through the development of informed, critical 
thinking skills and a broad, varied exposure to the multicultural and 
international global community in which they will all live and work. We 
also share the belief that effective use of new technologies in teaching 
can significantly enrich the experiential learning process."
	Global Studies became a major study program at St. Lawrence in the 
fall of 2000,  with a goal of teaching students to analyze comparatively the 
impact of global processes on specific phenomena connected with, across and 
between geographical areas. While it  serves as an "umbrella" for University 
programs in African, European, Asian, Canadian and Latin American/Caribbean 
studies, it is also a stand-alone, interdisciplinary program with its own 
faculty and core courses. Study-abroad programs and issues of diversity 
are also incorporated.
	Five new faculty members have been hired to teach in the program 
as well.
	St. Lawrence's ISEI is a comprehensive science education initiative 
that will transform the way its students learn and understand science by 
increasing the frequency and level of "hands-on," in-depth field study and 
integrating it across science disciplines through all four years of 
undergraduate study.
	The site for the ISEI is the 300-acre Little River area of the 
St. Lawrence campus.  Faculty and students will develop a series of 
geographically referenced field science sites for ongoing study and data 
collection, forming a long-term, multi-disciplinary GIS  database, which 
will represent the collection and study of a wide variety of conditions and 
habitats over time and will be shared and maintained by faculty and students 
from throughout the sciences, including biology, chemistry, geology, 
environmental studies, mathematics and psychology. 
	The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is a philanthropic organization based 
in New York City, dedicated to promoting the well-being of all people through 
support of efforts in the United States and abroad that contribute ideas, 
develop leaders and encourage institutions in the transition to global 
interdependence.

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