The consortium on “Forced Migration, Displacement, and Education” has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Two years ago, Sarah Lawrence joined with Vassar, Bard, and Bennington colleges to form a consortium on the global refugee crisis. The Mellon grant supports development of a shared curriculum that will integrate learning practices, teaching labs, and faculty development initiatives across the four schools. Research on “temporary” populations by Parthiban Muniandy (sociology) will provide the basis for a four-week summer intensive in Malaysia, where students will learn from local scholars and migrants’ rights organizations while conducting ethnographic writing projects. A summer intensive program in Switzerland, led by Adam Brown (psychology), will collect and analyze data related to mental health issues experienced by refugees.
With a gift of $100,000, Yale physician and professor Laura Kirchman Manuelidis ’63 has endowed an enrichment fund that bears her name.
Manuelidis is head of neuropathology in the department of surgery and a faculty member in neurosciences and virology. She studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence and earned her MD at Yale Medical School, and she has since published poetry as well as scientific articles. Her endowed fund will support experiences for undergraduates at the intersection of the literary arts, especially poetry, and the sciences.
Trustee Olivia “Vicki” Churchill Ford ’60, MSEd ’87 and her husband, Silas Ford, have donated $1.5 million to expand and enhance environmental studies at Sarah Lawrence.
Their generous gift will establish the OSilas Endowed Professorship in Environmental Studies in the 2020–21 academic year. Until then, the gift will support summer internships for Sarah Lawrence undergraduates at the Dodge Nature Preschool in West St. Paul, Minnesota, and at Sarah Lawrence’s Center for the Urban River in Yonkers, New York. This donation will also fund newly developed environmental studies courses taught by visiting professors.
Shortly before she passed away in February 2018, Signa Lynch Read ’52 made a very generous gift of $500,000.
Her donation to the College will be directed toward construction of the Barbara Walters Campus Center. Read was the daughter of Edmund C. Lynch, co-founder of Merrill Lynch, and Signa Fornaris. A longtime Vermont resident, Read founded one of the first therapeutic riding programs. She was a world traveler and a philanthropist with interests in animal rights, the arts, the environment, education, and ending hunger.
To honor his wife, Elizabeth Duncan Jenkins ’68, and her dedication to Sarah Lawrence, John C. Jenkins has made a leadership gift to establish a new scholarship fund at the College.
John and Elizabeth Jenkins are the grandparents of Isak A. McCune ’18. The Elizabeth Duncan Jenkins Endowed Scholarship Fund will support Sarah Lawrence students with financial need.
The Campaign for Sarah Lawrence maps out a vision that will ensure the College continues its forward momentum: educating intellectually rigorous, creative thinkers and doers who are singularly prepared to tackle the world. With your participation, we will realize this vision.