Winners of 2022 Institutional Challenge Grant announced
The William T. Grant Foundation, in partnership with the Spencer Foundation and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, has announced the winners of this year’s Institutional Challenge Grant.
Grants totaling more than $1.9 million were awarded to the University of Michigan, Georgia State University, and a partnership between Florida State University and Florida A&M University. The foundation also will supplement a grant to the University of Colorado to extend its collaboration with Denver Public Schools, which is focused on closing large achievement gaps through research to improve district policies that affect teachers.
Established in 2017, the competition encourages university-based research institutes, schools, and centers to grow existing research-practice partnerships with public agencies or nonprofit organizations to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. In addition, grantees are expected to shift their policies and incentives to value collaborative work and enhance the capacity of the partner organization to use evidence from research in decision making.
“These grants leverage the power and networks of universities to reduce inequality in youth outcomes, a persisting challenge that has become even more severe during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said William T. Grant Foundation president Adam Gamoran. “Research to reduce inequality is most likely to be helpful when it comes not out of ivory tower isolation, but rather from deep engagement with community partners. To support this work, universities need new strategies to value and encourage partnership-oriented, engaged scholarship, a key aim of the Institutional Challenge Grant program.”
(Photo Credit: Getty Images/Jacob Ammentorp Lund)
