The United Way of the Dutchess-Orange Region awarded a Community Fund Grant to the Office of Community Engaged Learning (OCEL), led by Elizabeth Cannon, Director of OCEL, to support the Vassar English Language Learners Outreach Program (VELLOP), part of the Vassar Education Collaboration now a core program of OCEL.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
