Trinity Launches New Global Leadership Initiative
President Patricia McGuire announced the launch of the Trinity Global Leadership Initiative, a major new signature program at Trinity Washington University to emphasize global issues throughout the curriculum. “Thanks to a generous $250,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, I am very pleased to establish this interdisciplinary, multi-faceted program that will benefit our students in so many ways,” said President McGuire. “Trinity students are citizens of the world, hailing from a remarkable range of nations, speaking dozens of languages and sharing an amazing mosaic of cultures. Our goal is to ensure that they have the values and perspectives, knowledge and talents to be effective citizen leaders in whatever pathways they follow after graduation. Trinity’s location in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital and a global city, provides students with a unique advantage to explore global issues.” This is the third major grant Trinity has received from the Andrew Mellon Foundation since 2015.
President McGuire added: “The most prominent issues and crises of contemporary society are all concerns of the global community – from the refugee crises and immigration policy concerns, to global climate change and environmental threats, to cybersecurity and the manipulation of electorates across national boundaries, to the spread of disease and urgent needs for healthcare and medical interventions especially in places afflicted with chronic poverty and violence, to the ongoing problems of illiteracy and the oppression of women’s intellectual growth and economic capacity. So many of these and other challenges require more sophisticated academic and intellectual talent than ever before. Preparing citizen leaders for effective participation in contemporary communities requires them to have a deep understanding of the roots and relationships among global challenges in history, culture, geography, language, philosophy, religion and ideology. Developing this broadly interdisciplinary perspective is the purpose of the Trinity Global Leadership Initiative.”
The Trinity Global Leadership Initiative will fund faculty and curricular development as well as student internships and research, along with symposia and other academic programs. Through this initiative, the faculty in history, political science and international affairs will form a global affairs program to ensure that we will attract students and scholars to study at Trinity and take advantage of Washington’s major resources in global issues.
This is the third major grant Trinity has received from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to strengthen the liberal arts at the undergraduate level.
- The first grant of $100,000 was awarded in 2015 and was at the invitation of the Mellon Foundation. “Strong Start in the Liberal Arts” was a three-year grant to strengthen Trinity’s first year curriculum by focusing on pedagogies to enhance reading and writing across the arts and humanities disciplines, and to promote undergraduate research in those disciplines. The grant supported several initiatives including first year curriculum revision, faculty development for teaching reading and writing across the disciplines, and undergraduate research in arts and humanities.
- A second Mellon grant to Trinity continued these initiatives, and included summer research awards to undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences. Read about the research projects students completed in summer 2018 and the opportunity to apply for research grants for summer 2019.
Read more about the Mellon grants and other grant supported student research in President McGuire’s 2018 President’s Report: “Research is Power!”
Read President McGuire’s blog post about the 2018 summer study abroad experiences of Trinity students, supported with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. Trinity is offering study abroad grants to students in summer 2019, in partnership with CIEE: Council for International Educational Exchange – learn more. The application deadline is March 12, 2019.