The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation has awarded Vassar’s Archives and Special Collections Library, under the leadership of the Head of Special Collections, Ron Patkus, a grant to preserve the records of Vassar’s Communications Office, which date from 1915.

Dutchess County Youth Services funded a grant to the Environmental Cooperative, led by Director Jennifer Rubbo, for a new outdoor recreation club for local youth, which in partnership with Poughkeepsie-based Community Matters 2, Inc., will offer guided hikes at the Preserve.

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.

Myles Drance, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, received a grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for his project entitled “Upconversion of Feedstock Chemicals by Iron in a Strong Ligand Field.” His research is focused on developing new iron-based catalysts for upgrading liquid alkanes.

Justin Touchon, Associate Professor of Biology, is the author of Applied Statistics with R: A Practical Guide for the Life Sciences and Beyond, recently published by Oxford University Press. The book uses the statistical language R and a real-world dataset to teach data manipulation skills and prepare readers for more advanced statistical analyses.

Yvonne Elet was awarded the Elizabeth Blair Macdougall Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians for her book Urban Landscape in the Third Rome: Raphael’s Villa and Mussolini’s Forum, which explores the twentieth-century recreation of the “Renaissance” gardens of Villa Madama, planned by Raphael, and “details how the restored villa came to be integrated into one of the most significant urban initiatives of the 20-year Fascist rule.”