The Urban
Partnership Program is a national effort to broaden access to
higher education for at-risk students. It grew out of the
Foundation's Urban Community College Transfer Opportunity Program,
which aimed to increase the number of students transferring to
senior colleges. The Urban Partnership Program provides resources
in 17 cities that are developing coordinated programs to improve
the flow of at-risk students along the entire educational pipeline,
from kindergarten through the postsecondary system. In 1992 the
Foundation funded the creation of the National Center for Urban
Partnerships on the Bronx Community College campus of the City
University of New York. The center brings together educators,
corporate and political leaders, and representatives of
community-based organizations to draw up comprehensive plans to
increase the number of students going to college in each of the 17
cities.
The
Foundation has begun to review the first of these plans and has
made grants to Rancho Santiago Community College District, the
Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, and the Seattle
Community College District to complete the first stage of citywide
projects in Santa Ana, Calif., San Antonio, and Seattle.
In South
Africa, Mozambique, Brazil, and Egypt, the Foundation has supported
a variety of projects to broaden student access to higher
education. In South Africa, for example, supplementary support this
year went to the University of the Western Cape, for an internship
program for black postgraduate students, and to the University of
Cape Town, to train black students in economic and social
research.
The
Foundation continued its longstanding support for minority arts
organizations and artists. Grants went to Crossroads, a leading
black theater company, to Lincoln Center to commission new works in
jazz, and to the National Jazz Service Organization to explore new
ways to assist creative jazz artists, especially those in
mid-career. In addition, grants went to such national arts service
organizations as the Dance Notation Bureau and the National Women
Composers Resource Center of the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic.
Both groups develop programs that serve women and minority artists
in dance and music.
Diversity
To foster
intellectual and cultural diversity on college campuses, the
Foundation introduced a national grants program in 1990 and
expanded it in 1992. The program was established partly in response
to reports of rising racial incidents on campus. But it also
reflected the Foundation's conviction that the condition of race
relations on any campus stems from the institution's ability to see
"diversity" as an opportunity to further cultural and intercultural
understanding. The Foundation's grants aim to encourage faculty to
direct their intellectual energy to the challenges of diversity
and, through curricular revision, to provide students with richer
opportunities for intercultural discourse.
The program
has focused increasingly on helping institutions develop plans to
respond to diversity. These plans cover a range of initiatives,
including strengthening recruitment and retention of students from
diverse backgrounds, recruitment of diverse faculty and staff,
revising curricula, and increasing financial aid. In 1992 the
Foundation made grants to consortia in the expectation that
collaboration among institutions would extend the influence of
their projects.
For many
years the Foundation has also taken a leading role in supporting
the development of African-American and women's studies. In
African-American studies, funding in 1992 continued to concentrate
on helping major research centers advance scholarship and
disseminate the most important results, and to train the next
generation of faculty. Incorporating research on minority women
into the undergraduate curriculum continued to be the focus of
women's