Carleton College and St. Olaf College have announced a $1.4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of a four-year initiative to boost institutional collaboration between the two Minnesota schools.

The initiative, Broadening the Bridge: Leading Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges Into a More Collaborative Future, will advance collaborative efforts between the schools in library services, information technology, operations, and academic programs. To that end, the funding will enable the Carleton and St. Olaf libraries, which began to work together in 2003, to select a new, more sophisticated library management system and develop a single shared research portal. The grant also will support the implementation of an organizational structure for sharing library staff in new ways.

In addition, the schools will establish a program of competitively awarded grants in support of faculty-led exploration and pilot activities with the potential for substantive academic collaboration. A 2012 Mellon Foundation planning grant was used to identify the most promising opportunities for collaboration between the two institutions.

"I'm profoundly grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which once again has shown its forward-looking commitment to helping liberal arts colleges flourish," said Carleton president Steven G. Poskanzer. "Foundation support will help both Carleton and St. Olaf be creative in improving undergraduate education and be wise and careful stewards."