Northfield, Minn.––The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is awarding $189,902 to Carleton College in support of the Summer Connections project, which will provide need-based scholarships for high-achieving, low-income high-school students to attend Carleton summer academic programs.
The grant, renewable for up to three years, will increase Carleton’s ability to make summer programs available to students who otherwise would not be able to attend due to financial reasons. In summer 2012, the grant will provide scholarship funding for 41 eligible students. The grant will also provide support for national publicity about the program and staffing to help administer scholarship program expansion.
Carleton’s summer programs in 2012 will include the Summer Writing Program, the Summer Science Institute, and the Quantitative Reasoning Institute. With funding from the Cooke Foundation, Carleton will focus on program expansion for high-achieving students from low-income families. In years two and three, Summer Connections will expand to offer additional courses, including arts and technology. Carleton summer programs will enroll up to 687 students over a three-year period. Cooke Foundation funding will provide at least 145 students with support, including need-based financial aid, transportation, tutoring, and counseling.
Information on Carleton’s Summer Connections programming is available at http://apps.carleton.edu/summer/.
Dean of the College and Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor of Sociology, Science, Technology, and Society Beverly Nagel sees the grant as an endorsement of the academic quality and innovation of Carleton’s project. “Our summer programs give talented high school students an opportunity to develop new skills and experience the value of a high-quality, residential, liberal arts college experience,” she said. “Our faculty have developed cutting-edge programs that are having a national impact, and I am delighted that the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation sees the contribution that these programs can make to high school students, especially ones who otherwise would not have access to this kind of academic challenge.”
The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, operating out of Lansdowne, Va., is a private, independent foundation helping exceptionally promising students reach their full potential through education. The Foundation and its partners work to increase opportunities for America’s most academically promising students, ensuring that a lack of financial resources does not deter their success at the highest levels. By seeking talent where it is sometimes overlooked or unsupported, each year the Foundation helps prepare hundreds of exceptionally promising individuals to emerge as leaders in all academic and professional disciplines.
More information on this round of grants and the Foundation can be found at www.jkcf.org.