Wright Great Books Gets Kovler Foundation Grant
Great Books Curriculum Earns First Grant
Marjorie Kovler Foundation To Fund
Student and Faculty Work
The Great Books Curriculum achieved a very major milestone earlier this year receiving its first grant. The donor is the prestigious Marjorie Kovler Foundation. One of Chicago’s most prominent philanthropic organizations, the Marjorie Kovler Foundation has donated wings to the main Chicago Public Library and the Lincoln Park Zoo.
It has also funded a variety of worthy causes such as the establishment of the nation’s largest healing center for torture victims, which is headquartered in Chicago.
The five thousand dollar grant, solicited by the Great Books Curriculum founder and coordinator Professor Bruce Gans, will be used to help underwrite Great Books student scholarship, cultural activities, publications and faculty development.
“Having been on sabbatical the past semester I have not had an opportunity yet to discuss this matter with the rest of the Great Books faculty,” Professor Gans explained. “But I am very confident my colleagues will agree with me that because the materials that form the basis of the Great Books Curriculum are of the highest excellence and beauty, part of this money should be used to reward Great Books students whose grades and papers in Great Books courses reflect those values through achievement. The Marjorie Kovler Foundation ought to allow us to award a few scholarships and rewards.
“Right now our scholarly journal Symposium exists out of the generosity of the Wright College photocopy center. I would like to see us present student work in a bit more handsome manner to lend a little extra dignity to the contributors’ achievements.
“Also” Professor Gans continued, “there are some very dedicated faculty who have taken on extra projects. “They would also like to do very extensive course development. I would like to see them supported.
"The amount of the grant will enable us to make a beginning in these areas, in some cases very significant, in others more symbolic. But last year at this time getting any grant money at all was no more tangible a thing than a fervent wish. In the next year I will personally be working hard to see if we cannot get other organizations to help our students in the way that the Marjorie Kovler Foundation has.”
Kovler Foundation president Peter Kovler said, "I am a University of Chicago graduate and while there I gained a very deep love of the Great Books, which forms the core of the university’s curriculum. The Kovler Foundation is very heartened to see how significant a contribution the Wright College Great Books Curriculum has made in communicating a love of these works in students that otherwise might never have had that opportunity.”
