The Preserve at Vassar was awarded a grant through the NYS-funded Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquaria (ZBGA) Capital Program in support of the construction of a pavilion to serve as a visible anchor for the site while providing needed shelter for education and outreach programs, including those of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project.
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center was awarded funding by Tokyo-based Sumitomo Foundation toward the restoration of a 17th-century Japanese painted screen. A rarity and a cherished work in the Loeb’s Asian art collection, the screen was painted by Unkoku Toeki in the early 1600s. Its conservation will allow it to remain a popular teaching object for Art History at Vassar.
The George I. Alden Trust of Worcester, Mass. has awarded Vassar a grant toward the Vassar Libraries’ ambitious Learning Commons project, which will renovate over 11,000 square feet in the Main Library’s north wing to repurpose and optimize available space and improve accessibility.
Keri VanCamp, Director of the Field Station and Ecological Preserve, and her collaborators received another grant from the Lower Hudson Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management (LH-PRISM).
The Scholars at Risk Network (SAR) provides funding to support an at-Risk scholar. For 2025–26 Vassar’s Drama department welcomes an award-winning writer, director, and producer with multiple publications, Patricia Achiro Olwoch. Achiro was previously an at-risk scholar at Barnard University.
Students, faculty, staff, and administrators from nearly a dozen institutions recently gathered to explore questions about the future of belonging and mattering in higher education. They tackled topics ranging from ancestral intelligence to AI.
Two multi-year grants from the Lumina Foundation and ECMC Foundation have been supporting research and programming at Vassar around college completion and community college students’ transfer to four-year institutions. This April 29 summit brought together higher education and foundation leaders from across the country at The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts to learn more about related outcomes and actionable items.
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center was awarded an additional grant by The Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation in support of an effort with the Center for Creative Photography (University of Arizona, Tucson) to share the collaborative exhibition Making a Life in Photography: Rollie McKenna with audiences in the southwestern U.S. The exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of the photography of illustrious Vassar alumna Rosalie (“Rollie”) McKenna, Class of 1940.
Andrea Pesavento in Vassar’s Office of Health Promotion and Education received a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Higher Ed/Harm Reduction Pilot program grant through the NYS Conference of Local Mental Hygiene Directors. This program is training MHFA instructors at five participating colleges who will then lead sessions for students, faculty, and staff.
