Trinity College - The Quad

The Quad is a monthly newsletter for the entire Trinity community that is intended to bring people together from all areas of the College with a common source of information for campus news and events.

Michael Bradley '98, Editor
Assistant Director of Publications
michael.bradley@trincoll.edu

Communications Office
79 Vernon Street
Hartford, Connecticut 06106

Past Issues:

November 2002
October 2002

Trinity Awarded $100K Ford Foundation Grant to Explore Global Studies Consortium

Trinity has been awarded a grant for $100,000 by The Ford Foundation. The grant is intended to fund a yearlong planning process that will examine creative ways to reconfigure existing global studies arrangements among members of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) into meaningful and perhaps more efficient partnerships.

“With an eye toward curbing costs while enriching educational experience and affirming student choice, we envision the establishment of a new consortium anchored in the NESCAC schools, given their similarities, but also open to other schools,” says President Richard H. Hersh in his planning proposal to the Ford Foundation. According to the proposal, more than 48 percent of Trinity students spend at least one term abroad.

“Despite this strikingly high rate of participation, there have been challenges with respect to the overall quality of programs in which students choose to enroll, as well as their cost to Trinity,” says Hersh in the proposal.

The new consortium would offer a variety of educational options and administrative structures, including the possibility of several mini-consortia within the larger arrangement, as well as linkages to well-established programs and consortia outside NESCAC.

In the coming year, a planning group will use funds from the grant to explore the curricular merits of several highly esteemed study abroad programs.

“It’s a very worthwhile process,” says Richard Mitten, director of international programs. "I think it’s going to work out quite well.”

NESCAC member institutions include Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams.

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