Recent Grants

Barr Foundation
The Barr Foundation awarded a grant of $100,000 to the School of Management to launch its new Institute for Nonprofit Leadership and Management (INLM). The INLM is an executive education program that addresses the severe national shortage of trained non profit leaders. The Institute provides working professionals with a curriculum that combines coursework, experiential learning, mentoring, and peer support. Over the next three years the Institute will expand its core education programs to serve 160 new aspiring non profit executive directors.

Atlantic Philanthropies
Based in the Boston University School of Social Work, the Institute for Geriatric Social Work (IGSW) received a grant of $3.1 million from Atlantic Philanthropies, Inc., to advance its work preparing a stronger workforce for an aging society. Already the recipient of more than $5 million in support from Atlantic Philanthropies, the IGSW has since it was established in 2002 become a national leader in the provision of post-professional training in geriatric care.

Henry Luce Foundation
In June 2008, the Henry Luce Foundation awarded the Boston University a grant of $450,000 to support the development of an academic program and a new tenure-track faculty position in East Asian archaeology in the Department of Archaeology.

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
With a start-up grant of $250,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the College of Communication (COM) has launched the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR). The NECIR was established to address the steep decline in original investigative reporting in New England and is the nation’s first university-based, nonprofit investigative reporting collaborative focused on local and regional issues. Combining resources of COM with those of local media organizations, the NECIR will produce high-quality, original investigative content that will be distributed on multiple platforms through partnering media organizations.

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center was awarded Mellon Foundation grants totaling $750,000 to build a catalog unifying the two major collections of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s papers, held by Morehouse College and Boston University, and enabling them to be searched simultaneously through a single, Web-based finding aid. The project, based at Boston University, is a collaboration between BU, the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center, and the King Papers Project at Stanford University. The catalog and finding aid, joining separate archival collections of a single figure in a single facility, will be a milestone in the archival field and in the study and promotion of the legacy of Dr. King, one of BU’s most illustrious graduates (Ph.D. ’55).

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Join Together at the School of Public Health received a grant of $749,333 to help maximize the impact of HBO's addiction treatment series and accompanying DVDs. In conjunction with the broadcast, Join Together worked with national and regional partners to organize events-town hall meetings, house parties, teach-ins, and editorial board meetings-that enabled targeted audiences in 30 media markets to view the HBO show and related materials, discuss the local implications of the program's message, and develop follow-up plans to address ways to remove the barriers to treatment and recovery that they have identified in their communities.

Surdna Foundation
A grant of $240,000 over three years will support scholarships for exceptional orchestral instrumentalists-with priority given to qualified minority students and those who demonstrate financial need-to attend the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI). The grant also includes funding for a half-time position dedicated to fund-raising and minority student recruitment.

Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
A renewed grant will support the participation of six more Beckman Scholars as part of the University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). The award provides each Beckman Scholar with stipends for one academic year and two full summers of research in chemistry, biochemistry, and the biological and medical sciences. UROP supplements the award with $4,000 grants for a second year of research funding.

Bernard Osher Foundation
The Bernard Osher Foundation awarded Boston University’s Metropolitan College a $50,000 grant giving eligible adult students the opportunity to continue their first bachelor’s degree after a significant hiatus. The Osher Reentry Scholarships may be applied to any undergraduate degree program at Metropolitan College, but a significant cohort are expected to enroll in the Executive Degree Completion Program, which provides an accelerated course of study for motivated professionals who have 65 transferable undergraduate credits. Twenty scholarships of $2,500 will be awarded in 2008-09.