Focus Areas in Higher Education

Overview

<p>Higher education has been a focus of the Foundation’s grantmaking since the Foundation’s very first grant in 1936 to Yenching University in Beijing. Over half of all grant monies awarded since the Foundation’s establishment have been to higher education institutions. Through its grants to colleges and universities, the Luce Foundation aims to advance three goals:</p> <ol> <li>To stimulate and support scholarship, especially projects that break new ground and that cross disciplinary and geographic boundaries</li> <li>To ensure that high-quality research, especially in the humanities and qualitative social sciences, informs policymaking and public discussion</li> <li>To prepare the next generation of diverse scholars and academic leaders                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  </li> </ol> <div>Grants awarded to to colleges and universities through the Higher Education Program should focus on at least one of the particular strategies described below:</div> <ul> <li>Encouraging new approaches to the dissemination of research outside of the academy—including to the general public or to particular communities of interest, like policymakers or practitioners</li> <li>Facilitating collaboration, dialogue, or another kind of exchange or partnership between scholars and practitioners or policymakers</li> <li>Facilitating and nurturing trans-disciplinary and trans-national research and training, especially across institutional boundaries and barriers of various kinds</li> <li>Supporting dialogue and collaboration between US and non-US institutions about higher education goals and strategies, especially in order to strengthen non-US institutions and the higher education sector in other parts of the world</li> <li>Supporting innovation in doctoral education, especially in ways that empower graduate students and equip them to thrive personally and professionally in the more challenging contemporary context</li> <li>Eliminating obstacles to a diverse professoriate and administration, especially in the physical sciences, engineering, and mathematics</li> </ul> <div>Recommended proposals will be presented to the Foundation’s board of directors for approval three times each year—in March, June, and November.</div>