In support of an initiative to integrate statistics across the curriculum, the W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded Carroll College a grant in the amount of $200,000 for Project InterStats. The project will provide interdisciplinary experiences for students, involve more students in undergraduate research, and provide funds for professional development for a wide cross-section of faculty.
“We are honored that the W. M. Keck foundation has entrusted us with such a substantial grant,” said Dr. Kelly Cline, associate professor of mathematics and astronomy. “Our whole team is very excited about this new project to reimagine how we integrate statistics into the Carroll College curriculum. Statistics is an amazingly useful branch of human knowledge. With this new project we will help Carroll students to explore how they can use the awesome power of statistics in their own research and their own careers.”
Currently, over 65% of students at Carroll College take a statistics course as part of their degree program requirements. The purpose of Project InterStats, an interdisciplinary collaboration of five faculty who teach statistics and twelve faculty from disciplines that regularly employ statistics, is to design and implement strategies that help students to more effectively relate their statistics coursework to research activity in their own fields of study. Project Interstats will develop a unified set of curricular materials to be used both in statistics courses and in a broad cross section of courses in other disciplines; these materials will be compiled into a mixed-media online resource to replace the traditional statistics textbook.
“This grant is a testament to the remarkable efforts of our Carroll faculty in embracing innovative teaching methods, working collaboratively across disciplines and seeking opportunities to actively engage with our students,” said Dr. Tom Evans, president of Carroll College. “Through this gift, a very prestigious national foundation has recognized the excellence of our institution, our faculty and our programs.”
This award continues the work that the W.M. Keck Foundation funded with a $50,000 planning grant to Carroll College in January of 2014. The initial grant enabled the core grant writing team to clearly identify the goals and activities that would best serve Carroll students and faculty in restructuring the statistics curriculum at Carroll. These two awards represent the first funding ever received by Carroll College from the W.M. Keck Foundation.
This gift is in addition to four other academic grants that Carroll College has recently received: $100,000 from the William Randolph Hearst Foundations to further develop the humanities program at Carroll; $24,000 from the Apgar Foundation to support a yearlong series of events that will heighten awareness of constitutionalism within the community and help develop a sustainable and active Constitutional Studies Center; and two grants totaling nearly $100,000 from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust’s Research in the Natural Sciences program to help fund faculty/student research activity in the health sciences and biology departments at Carroll.
About the W.M. Keck Foundation
The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. Mr. Keck envisioned a philanthropic institution that would provide far-reaching benefits for humanity. By taking a bold, creative approach to grantmaking, he created a legacy that the Foundation proudly upholds today. Supporting pioneering discoveries in science, engineering and medical research has been and continues to be their mandate. In the area of education, they support undergraduate programs that promote inventive approaches to instruction and effective involvement of students in research.
The W. M. Keck Foundation funds undergraduate institutions in eighteen western states, with a special focus on private, predominantly undergraduate institutions.