Foundation Grants: A Closer Look at New Support for Faculty
Research, Digital Quaker Collection
As announced in ESR Reports, the seminary has recently received
two new foundation grants. Here is more information about the
grants, and the projects they fund.
Funder: Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
Project: The Digital
Quaker Collection
Grant Amount: $150,000. Most of the funds will be spent on the
actual digitizing process, which costs about two dollars per
page. Existing faculty and staff will handle project activities
such as research, planning, and outreach.
Key facts:
The project will make available more than 60,000 pages of primary
documents, accessible at no cost to anyone with an internet connection
and a standard web browser.
The collection will focus on, but will not be limited to, material
published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Tim Seid, Associate Dean of Distributed Learning,
is functioning as Project Director, and Steve Spyker, Director
of Information
Technology, is the Chief Technical Consultant.
Quaker scholars who developed the bibliography include ESR’s
David Johns and Steve Angell, as well as Tom Hamm, Mary Garman
and Michael Birkel from Earlham College.
There are four parts to the digitizing process: scanning, data
entry, coding, and the creation of the custom browse and search
software which will make it easy to locate and search through
documents of particular interest to each reader. On May 15, ESR
signed a contract with TechBooks to handle the project. By July
15, two-thirds of the material had gone through the initial scanning
process.
You can view the bibliography, follow the progress of the
project, and learn how the digitizing process works by visiting
the project webpage: esr.earlham.edu/dqc/
The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, based in Jacksonville,
Florida, are a national philanthropic organization established
through the generosity of the late American industrialist, Arthur
Vining Davis, who became president of the Aluminum Company of
America in 1910 and served as chairman of the board for many
years.
From Jay Marshall’s proposal to the Arthur Vining
Davis Foundations:
As it fulfills it educational mission, ESR is a major source
for Quaker scholarship, both as a context in which Quaker
scholars learn, teach, and write, and as a producer of materials
for use
by Friends and other groups interested in Quaker perspectives
on various issues.…
From its inception in the mid-17th century, Quakers
were known as “publishers of the truth.” The theological and
organizational biases of Quakers have historically inhibited
the production of systematic presentations on theological topics.
As a result, the great wealth of Quaker thinking is contained
in primary materials such as journals, epistles, and monographs.
It is there that one discovers the depth of Quaker spirituality
reflected in epistles about the Light of Christ, inner struggles
to discern Truth, or the potentially sacramental nature of
all life. Journals chronicle Quaker efforts to abolish slavery,
emphasize
education, work with the mentally ill, or insist on prison
reforms.
Most of these texts are available only on a limited basis
given the age and nature of the documents. Quaker colleges
have become
the guardians of these written treasures, with at least one
pitfall. This situation places geographical restrictions on
the availability
of the materials. If persons do not live near such a collection,
then it is nearly impossible to research them. Not only does
this mean that many, many Friends simply are never exposed
to these riches, but this restricted availability is also problematic
for ESR’s mission….
1. These texts are crucial to ESR’s educational program. For
students in the residential program, most of these texts are
available in the Friends Collection housed in Lilly Library at
Earlham. Students in the ESR Access program do not enjoy this
access [even though they have access to excellent theological
libraries]…. As we believe ESR Access provides the greatest
opportunity for the school to serve as a resource for renewal
at the most
basic, local level of meetings and churches, making these texts
accessible has become a high priority for ESR.
2. A digital collection of primary texts is also needed as
ESR fills its role as a provider of resources to Quakers
in general.
The greatest growth among Quakers at this point in time
is occurring in Africa. These Friends hunger for resources that
will help
shape their faith and worship according to Friends principles
and values. ESR is considering ways we might help address
this matter…. For this to be accomplished, we must find
a way to make Quaker texts accessible to these Friends
across
the
waters.
The value of a digital collection of Quaker texts is not limited
to ESR students and Friends in Africa. In the United States, “arm
chair” Quaker scholars abound….Though this alone would not
be motivation for ESR to pursue this project, we recognize
that
this additional group would benefit from this project. As they
benefit, so too will those who are influenced by them.
A few individuals have independently undertaken the task of
digitizing a limited number of Quaker texts. While these are
to be applauded, the quantity is too small. Furthermore, to
date this approach proves to be frustrating as resources move
from
site to site, or disappear completely.…As an educational institution
with a firm commitment to provide resources, an ESR-led project
would provide consistency of quality and of availability.
In sum, ESR observes a need for accessibility to old and rare
primary Quaker documents. A digital collection of these materials
would serve four groups:
ESR Access students;
international Friends new to the faith who desire foundational
material;
other Friends who enjoy research for personal reasons, but who
share their newfound insights with other interested individuals;
others who recognize the riches of Quaker faith and spirituality.
This project serves ESR’s role as a leader in harnessing technology
to expands its capability to fulfill its mission. It helps break
through one of Quakerism’s greatest challenges: isolation and
ignorance that easily develop in decentralized organizations,
especially those that are scarred by splits from historical
schisms.
Funder: E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation
Project:
Faculty Research
Grant Amount: $27,000 for one year, with an invitation “to consider
reapplying for funding for the project annually for the next
two years.”
Key facts:
Funding will cover the non-salary costs of research projects,
such as travel to conferences and archives, and copying and acquisition
of materials.
This new initiative is structured into three tiers of funding — each
larger and more selective than the next — along with opportunities
for faculty to present their research to the ESR community.
The Carpenter Foundation has supported ESR before, with a major
grant in the late 1990s to launch the Cooper Scholars program.
This grant creates a pool of research funding where none has
existed before.
The funding priorities of the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter
Foundation include Asian Art and graduate education. The foundation
has funded a number of major initiatives at US seminaries.
From Jay Marshall’s proposal to the foundation:
So much has happened at Earlham School of Religion since the
school’s mid-90s collaboration with the E. Rhodes and Leona
B. Carpenter Foundation. The Cooper Scholars Program, for
which
the foundation provided seed money, is well-established,
and has made the benefits of an ESR education available to
a splendid
array of alumni and the communities they serve. The school
has also adopted a strategic plan that emphasizes improved
communication
and accessibility to its constituents and target population
groups. Less than three years into implementation of that
plan, we are
already seeing exciting results, such as:
Our distributed education program, ESR Access, is up and running
in four satellite locations around the United States, bringing
graduate level theological education to those for whom relocation
to Eastern Indiana is not a reasonable option;
A recent $150,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation
will allow ESR to convert hundreds of early Quaker texts to electronic
form and make them freely available worldwide through our website;
ESR’s unique Ministry of Writing program has experienced a
surge of interest and resources, including most recently the
news of
a million-dollar planned gift from Frank Mullen;
Promising conversations are underway that could lead to educational
endeavors with prison inmates, and with theological educational
institutions in Kenya and Indonesia, each of which will provide
additional stimuli in the area of multicultural engagement.
Perhaps the most exciting development — one that was beginning
in the late-90s, peaked in 2001, and is continuing today — is
the changing face of ESR’s faculty. Through a series of retirements
and new hires, ESR’s current faculty is a young group — not in
the sense of maturity as persons, ministers and instructors,
but in terms of their recent arrival at ESR. [Thirteen] of the
school’s seventeen teaching and administrative faculty members
began their ESR careers in 1998 or later.…
In recognition of the needs of a young faculty — especially
at a small denomination’s small seminary in a small town! — we
have in recent years taken several faculty development initiatives,
including:
The ESR Tour of Quaker England in the summer of 2001, which
built community amongst faculty and staff and offered valuable
first-hand experience with the historical sites where the Quaker
movement was born more than 350 years ago.
Our current series of peer workshops on assessment in theological
education. In a roundtable environment, faculty members take
turns reporting and critiquing one of the books recommended
by the Association for Theological Education’s project on the
Character and Assessment of Learning for Religious Vocation.
Like the England
trip (albeit in a less extraordinary environment!), this project
builds knowledge and community simultaneously.
A small increase in the professional development budget….
Faculty make fine use of these modest funds, primarily to attend
professional
conferences.
These are good times for Earlham School of Religion. I am
personally committed to making them even better for this very
special group
of scholars and persons of faith who have come to serve as
ESR’s
faculty. These women and men possess not only an unquestionable
commitment to their work in the classroom and administration,
but also a remarkable appetite for research. As I hope the attached
documents will show, the research they have done — and with a
modest infusion of additional resources, will be able to do — promises
many benefits to the school, to the Society of Friends, and
to society as a whole.
8/1/03
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