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  Newsletter

News@Knight

Issue No. 37 -- Summer 1998

These articles have been reprinted from the summer 1998 Knight Foundation newsletter. If you would like a print version, e-mail us at publications@knightfdn.org

 

 

North Dakota Visit Gives Trustees a Feel for ‘Community’

Drenched by flood and singed by flame 16 months ago, residents of the Red River Valley of the North are tapping ample reservoirs of community spirit as they rebuild and reinvent their cities.

Knight foundation's trustees and senior staff traveled to Grand Forks, N.D., in mid-June to witness the region’s progress as it emerges from the calamitous blizzards, epic floods and fires that gutted 11 downtown buildings in the spring of 1997. Floodwaters inundated much of the community and caused the biggest civilian evacuation of a U.S. community since the Civil War.

On tours around town, in meetings with community leaders and at social gatherings, the message was clear: Grand Forks and East Grand Forks are working together for a better future. They have been aided in part by the foundation's commitment of $1 million for disaster relief and recovery.

"Communities find their resiliency through great disasters and they discover hidden talents and resources they didn’t know they had," said Laurel Reuter, founder and director of the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. "The flood brought folks together who had never spoken with each other and forced them to appreciate each other. This has given us an opportunity to work together in a way that few communities will ever experience."

During the flood, the museum opened its doors to the community, providing refuge to displaced nonprofit organizations, potluck community suppers and a temporary home for the Bible Baptist Church. In the final distribution from the $1 million Knight contribution, the museum received $122,000 to collect and archive material, commission works of art and mount a two-part exhibition on the flood and its impact.

"Grand Forks proved to all of us from Knight that the civic enterprise is an abiding reality in the Red River Valley," said Hodding Carter III, the foundation's president and CEO, one of about 20 Knight visitors. "We came away more convinced than ever that community involvement is the heart and soul of our democracy."

Michael Maidenberg, president and publisher of the Grand Forks Herald and a member of the foundation's Community Initiatives Advisory Committee, served as host and led the community tours. The flood-related fire destroyed three Herald buildings, but the newspaper continued to publish and won'the 1997 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service this April.

Rising 97 feet above the street, a clock tower gracing the Herald’s new home symbolizes Grand Forks’ commitment to its historic downtown. The height is a reminder of the year of the flood; the rotunda dome beneath it rises to 54.11 feet – the level of the Red’s flood crest. The foundation's tour included the new Herald and the Museum of Art. Two other projects receiving post-flood Knight funding were also involved: the multipurpose Empire Arts Center, a refurbished theater serving as home to a variety of arts organizations; and Cafe Kosmos, a new teen center and restaurant. A bird’s-eye rendering in the Empire’s lobby offered a vision of a new city center, complete with commercial, arts and professional districts and a massive flood wall coursing through downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods.

The visit included a sampling of flood-related photography, art and drama at the Empire and the Muse-um of Art; a funders’ session with grant-seekers; and a community dinner at the 6,000-acre Scott Farm in Gilby, an appropriate demonstration of agriculture’s leading role in the valley’s economy.

Grand Forks is one of the 26 U.S. cities and towns where the Foundation concentrates its local grant making in the community initiatives program. The June board meeting is an annual opportunity for the board and staff to get acquainted with a Knight community.

"There’s no better way for this foundation's trustees and staff to learn about the impact of our grants than these in-depth visits," said Linda Raybin, director of community initiatives programs.

 

 

National Projects Give Millennium an Artistic Flair

Two of the nation’s most significant cultural efforts marking the new millennium – one a White House-led campaign to preserve the Star-Spangled Banner, the other a photographic and written survey to interpret American culture – are moving toward 2001 with Knight Foundation support.

The three-story-high flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 and inspired Francis Scott Key to compose the words of the National Anthem will undergo three years of conservation treatment beginning in October. Knight's $250,000 grant to the Smithsonian Institution, where the flag has been on exhibit since 1907, is part of a national, $18-million undertaking – one of the largest textile preservation projects in America.

The campaign was launched at the Smithsonian July 13 as the lead project in the White House Millennium Council’s Tour to Save America’s Treasures. The multicultural preservation effort is chaired by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The flag, which has been hanging since 1964 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, has undergone two previous conservation efforts.

The 30- by 34-foot flag will be laid out in a special conservation lab at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The lab has been designed so that the public will be able to view the work as it progresses. A variety of educational and outreach programs are planned for the duration of the project. When treatment is completed in 2002, the flag will be placed in a three-story, climate-controlled protective enclosure in a renovated Flag Hall.

"Our goal here is to stabilize this flag, not to make it look new," said Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss, the museum’s senior conservator.

"This project, in addition to ensuring the long life of one of America’s great cultural icons, spotlights the importance of preserving the millions of other documents, artworks and artifacts – in public and private collections – which together define our national identity," said Gary Burger, Knight's director of arts and culture programs.

A $100,000 Knight grant goes to the College of Santa Fe for the National Millennium Survey. The project grows out of the rich American'tradition of image-based surveys such as the Civil War photos of Matthew Brady and the Farm Security Administration project to document rural America during the Depression. The survey is the lead project for the National Endowment of the Arts in the White House Millennium Program.

The survey is a creation of James Enyeart, director of the Anne and John Marion Center for Photographic Arts at the College of Santa Fe. The project will hire 40 established and emerging photographers and 25 writers to produce work over the next two years commenting on such aspects of American life as family, diversity, forces of tradition and ritual, consumerism and search for community.

The survey will culminate in 2001 with a touring exhibition, a digital archive and a series of books by leading publishers. The Knight grant supports the $700,000 project and matches a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which has recognized this as its flagship millennium project.

Said Burger: "This survey is a model for engaging artists to document American life at this unprecedented moment."

 

 

A Science Journalism Veteran Hands Over the Keys at MIT

July looms large in Victor McElheny’s career.

As a Boston Globe science writer in July 1969, he watched Apollo 11 lift off from Florida for mankind’s first walk on the moon. In July 1977 as a technology reporter for The New York Times, he explained to readers how a lightning-triggered power failure blacked out the Big Apple. And on July 1 this year, he made way for successor Boyce Rensberger after serving since 1982 as founding director of what is now the Knight'science Journalism Fellowships at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

McElheny has served the longest stint among those who head the eight midcareer journalism programs receiving major funding from Knight Foundation. Through 15 years at MIT and in the company of some 154 Knight Fellows, he shaped a respected program by staying true to the field of science journalism.

"The ultimate goal here has been to contribute to a better understanding of science and technology," said McElheny. "It’s kind of hard to measure the success of that. What we can measure is the number of folks who stay in the field. We’ve kept in pretty close touch, and just a handful of the fellows who have been through here have dropped out of science journalism and education. It’s a sign we’re doing something right."

"It’s hard to separate Victor from the program," says 1989-90 Knight Fellow David Baron, a science and environment reporter for National Public Radio. "When I began my year as a fellow, I was working all by myself in a little newsroom with WBUR in Boston. I didn’t think of myself as a part of a community of science journalists. The program at MIT helped me develop a sense of identity as a science journalist because I was with people who recognized its importance and who also saw it as a noble profession. Victor had a big part to play in that."

McElheny came to the job with the right resume: Seasoned science journalist for newspapers and magazines; director of the Banbury Center of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Nieman Fellow at Harvard; a year with Polaroid Corp.

He welcomed the first group of fellows to Cambridge in the ’83-84 school year and helped secure funding and endowment for the program, including $8 million from Knight Foundation since 1987.

"These programs are a very special kind of activity at a university; they’re kind of strange," McElheny says. "They’re for highly active, questioning midcareer people. They’re not just nice young students; they’re demanding. We encourage a lot of individual exploring on campus beyond the courses."

That, he adds, is by necessity. McElheny notes a shift in landscape for science writers and other specialized journalists.

"We’re going to have to be talking about our subjects in an increasingly grown-up way because society is growing up," says McElheny. "Consumers, citizens, employees and investors need much more sophisticated information than 10 or 15 years ago. The subject matter gets more complicated; translating it easily into journalism gets more difficult."

Rensberger, formerly a science writer and science editor at The Washington Post, says he agrees. "Science writing is the toughest beat at a newspaper because science moves forward, and the subject matter gets harder and harder to understand," he says. "The program Victor created has become essential to helping journalism keep up."

McElheny awaits the fall publication of Insisting on the Impossible, his biography of Polaroid’s Edwin Land.

"The Knight Fellowship program at MIT has developed into a top-notch experience for science journalists under Vic’s leadership," said Del Brinkman, the foundation's director of journalism programs. "Vic’s talents, combined with his excellent administrative skills, have created a program which should continue to grow in stature and results under the promising stewardship of Boyce Rensberger."

 

 

Status Report: New Online Survey Helps CIS Keep Students in School

This is the 10th in a series of in-depth articles on Knight Foundation programs and initiatives.

On a parched June afternoon, Susan McCallion watches a cheerful file of 8- and 9-year-old boys bop past her into a computer classroom at the NFL/Youth Education Town Center in Miami’s Liberty City. They are among 350 kids attending a summer education/recreation program; most live nearby in a sprawling public housing tract.

McCallion remembers spending two months getting one of these youngsters to open up enough to reveal that his mother was an alcoholic. Had she known that earlier, said McCallion, executive director of Miami’s Communities In Schools, she would be better equipped to help keep him in school and out of trouble.

For now, he’s there, he’s happy and out of harm’s way. As he moves into the middle- and high-school years, that will be far less certain.

What if that shy child and millions of others like him could provide in-depth information about themselves and how they relate to friends, family, school and neighborhood in a low-impact way? Wouldn’t that help shape the kinds of services and incentives needed over the span of students’ studies to keep them thriving in school, all the way to graduation and beyond?

That’s the notion behind the School Success Profile (SSP), an innovative assessment tool that gleans the inside stuff from at-risk students and leads to better ways of meeting their needs.

Three grants totaling just over $950,000 approved in June by Knight foundation's trustees link the university researchers who created the SSP with students and schools in South Florida and Wichita. The grants support the development, testing and increased use of the survey so that middle- and high-school students have better odds of succeeding.

In the "glass-is-half-empty" world of dropouts, gangs, teen pregnancy, poverty, broken families and low self-esteem, Communities In Schools (CIS) has grown into the nation’s largest stay-in-school network, incorporating half-full optimism as it works with 300,000 children in 28 states. CIS believes that each child deserves four basics: a one-on-one relationship with a caring adult; a safe place to learn and grow; a marketable skill to use upon graduation and a chance to give back to peers and community.

Since 1990, Knight Foundation has provided nearly $3.5 million in 17 different grants to the national CIS organization in Alexandria, Va., its local affiliates and partners.

The CIS challenge is significant. McCallion works in Miami-Dade County, where 8.4 percent of the significant Hispanic student population left school in 1996-97. And even though the rate for blacks and whites is lower (7.5 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively), McCallion looks at her charges in Liberty City and says, "They’re all at risk."

The CIS mission of helping kids help themselves emerged from a life lesson by founder Bill Milliken. "Removed" from high school as a dead-end student, Milliken and a friend hung out in a Pittsburgh pool hall until a youth program worker showed enough faith in them to set them on the right course. Milliken and friend later vowed to use the power of such positive relationships to get kids off the streets, eventually starting storefront schools in Brooklyn in 1966 to provide dropouts a place to finish their education and get marketable skills.

The approach caught the attention of funders and President Jimmy Carter; by 1977, the whole student concept was known as Cities In Schools. Now Communities In Schools, the network relies on trained local staff, volunteers, board members and local private and corporate funders to use and coordinate existing community services – social workers, tutors, counselors, health providers, employers – for young people at risk of dropping out.

Knight foundation's relationship as a funding partner with CIS has evolved, with support going to CIS affiliates in our communities to help with start-up costs, develop school-to-work mentoring programs and create alternative schools. As the national network expanded, Knight provided funding and challenge grants to help institute national standards at the local level and provide training and technical assistance. Now, through the advancement of the SSP questionnaire, the network has available a concrete and sophisticated linkage of academic theory and grass-roots application.

"Among the many national organizations we support, none is more effective in working at the local level than Communities In Schools," said A. Richardson Love Jr., Knight foundation's director of education programs. "They are skillful and sensitive in helping communities organize and use their resources well to reach students and families most in need."

In paper form, the SSP survey is a self-guided, easy-to-follow set of 112 questions such as "Do you have a dependable way to get to school?" and "How often are you afraid that someone will hurt or bother you at school?"

Professors Gary Bowen and Jack Richman developed the survey at the Jordan Institute for Families at the School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It has been field-tested in Charlotte and Philadelphia schools.

Bowen said the pilot test results show that about one in five students is afraid at school and in the neighborhood. "We can’t expect students to perform at school when they face situations of fear and danger," he said. "We have to go beyond the school to also consider students in the context of neighborhood, family and peer group. The role of neighborhood influences has been virtually ignored in past studies of school performance."

A $581,000 grant over three years will help the Jordan Institute develop and test an online SSP. The institute will also develop Spanish language, audio and elementary-school versions.

A regional collaboration involving Communities In Schools organizations in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties – serving three of the nation’s largest urban school districts – will use a $222,500 grant to offer the survey to 600 students in each county. It’s the largest and most diverse use of the survey yet. The project, linking nine schools and the NFL/YET Center where McCallion’s summer program was getting under way in late June, will provide a variety of results for evaluation.

CIS of Wichita will use $150,000 to incorporate the survey in its development of a comprehensive evaluation plan. All three grants enable CIS to develop customized approaches for each child known as individualized intervention plans.

"We believe the School Success Profile can help local Communities In Schools organizations become even more successful by better matching programs to individual needs and stretching limited resources to reach more students," said Love."

It’s an ambitious program for a network intending to reach at least one million kids by 2000.

"I’m excited that I’ve lived long enough to see it get this far," Milliken said in an interview. "I have more hope now than at any time since I started almost 30 years ago."

 

 

Grants Create a Career Path in Arts for African-Americans

Two very different arts organizations with the same goal – providing more jobs and career opportunities for African-Americans in the arts – will use Knight funding from the arts and culture program to help diversify their fields.

A $100,000 grant to the trustees of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., will help in the development, assembly and mounting of the exhibition, "To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities," its national tour and related educational programs.

The multifaceted educational and artistic project has been developed by a consortium of 10 institutions to select, conserve, document and display up to 200 important artworks in the collections of six historically black universities: Clark Atlanta, Fisk, Hampton, Howard, North Carolina Central and Tuskegee.

A key part of the project focuses on a conservation and collection-care training program for minority students. The summer art conservation training program at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center for selected students from each of the participating schools will be complemented by month-long collection-care summer workshops at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy and the Studio Museum in Harlem. The Addison Gallery and Studio Museum are also serving as co-organizers of the touring exhibit.

In Philadelphia, a $50,000 grant will help the New Freedom Theatre continue an internship program offering advanced training and career experience to young people interested in theater. The theater – an educational, drama and community center for African-American youth – will use the internship program to give local high school and college students the full spectrum of professional theater opportunities, including production and presentation of plays and musicals, background in development and fund raising, administration and theater management.

"These exemplary projects highlight the great potential of creative, hands-on training to increase diversity in the cultural workplace," said Gary Burger, Knight foundation's director of arts and culture programs.

Teaching Corps to Develop Classroom Savvy

Teach For America, an organization addressing the shortage of teachers in the nation’s urban and rural public schools in the past decade, will use a Knight Foundation grant to bolster the professional development of its teaching corps.

Since 1989, Teach For America has recruited, trained and placed in 500 U.S. schools some 4,000 outstanding graduates of the nation’s leading colleges and universities who had not been prepared formally to teach. In the process of reaching more than 600,000 of the nation’s most underserved school children, TFA has also succeeded in recruiting minority and bilingual teachers, male elementary teachers and math and science teachers. Surveys have given TFA teachers high ratings.

Not without its critics – among them established teacher educators who object to placing inexperienced recruits in challenging classrooms – TFA has grown, carried by the persistence of its founder, Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp. Knight funding – four grants dating to 1991 – has helped the organization move toward efficiency and stability.

Since experiencing financial uncertainty at mid-decade, TFA has gone through three consecutive years of reorganization.

A $300,000 Knight grant will help TFA develop the capacity of its 13 regional offices over three years to help build relationships with local educational resources, organize support networks of TFA alumni and corps members and encourage its teachers to take more personal responsibility for their own professional development.


Updated July 19, 2006