Bates receives $1.2M Kresge Foundation grant

A $1.2 million Kresge Foundation challenge grant to Bates College will support the ongoing construction of the college’s new academic building, scheduled for completion in the summer of 1999.

The challenge grant requires that Bates raise $6.8 million in new gifts and grants by March 1, 1999 to complete funding for the $18 million project. The college has already raised $5.2 million in gifts, with a bond issue providing an additional $6 million in funding.

“We eagerly look forward to the Kresge challenge,” Bates College President Donald W. Harward said. “The Kresge Foundation is a highly respected national foundation known for its rigorous assessment of grant proposals and its support of innovative capital projects,” Harward said. Coupled with the tremendous impact of the Kresge grant dollars, the foundation’s positive assessment of this project validates our planning and design efforts.”

This grant is the second largest ever received by Bates, surpassed only by the 1984 Olin Foundation grant for the Olin Arts Center.

A five-level structure of 91,000 square feet, the new academic building will provide teaching spaces, faculty offices, laboratories and other facilities required by 11 departments and interdisciplinary programs.

The building will link programs and departments now physically dispersed and inadequately housed, promoting a new level of faculty and student interaction. “The building will also provide spaces to inspire creative teaching and learning that now characterizes Bates at its best: intense, challenging, rigorous and collaborative,” Harward said.

The Kresge Foundation, based in Troy, Mich., is an independent, private foundation created by the personal gifts of Sebastian S. Kresge and is not affiliated with any corporation or organization.

The foundation makes grants to projects involving construction or renovation of facilities and the purchase of major capital equipment or real estate. Grant recipients have raised initial funds toward their respective projects before requesting foundation assistance. Grants are then made on a challenge basis, requiring the raising of the remaining funds, thereby insuring completion of the projects.