Messiah College News Archive

The Oakes Museum of Natural History received a $98,500 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which museum director Ken Mark explains will purchase new storage units to facilitate proper conservation of the museum’s artifacts. Meeting the necessary requirements for preserving and improving its collections is the next step in the museum’s accreditation process; the current outdated storage units cannot keep the stored artifacts well-maintained and secure, which has hindered the goal of accreditation. Read the rest of this entry »

World Vision has committed $125,000 to fund the Collaboratory’s continued development of a remote pump monitoring system in Africa. Under development at Messiah is a system that would use sensors installed on pumps to communicate with cloud technology in order to remotely monitor pumps so that operational problems can be identified and repaired quickly. The Collaboratory is prototype testing in Ghana in March.

David Pettegrew, associate professor of history, has received a grant from Harvard University’s Loeb Classical Library Foundation to complete research on a work titled, “The Isthmus of Corinth: Crossroads of the Roman Mediterranean.” The book explores the story of the Isthmus of Corinth and the region’s connections to the Mediterranean world during the Roman era.

World Vision has awarded the Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research at Messiah College a contract for two projects that will be funded at $733,000 over three years with money from the Conrad Hilton Foundation. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Schaeffer, associate professor of chemistry, was recently awarded a National Science Foundation Partnerships for Innovation Project Seed Grant for his project, “The Use of Phosphate (Apatites) as Heavy Alkaline Earth Metal Remediation Agents,” an investigation using materials based on readily available minerals to render some heavy-metal pollutants less dangerous in the environment.  Specifically, Schaeffer and four students will attempt to transform the contaminating metals into forms that are less soluble in natural waters and less bioavailable.

David Foster, Messiah College professor of biology and environmental science, is managing a $35,800 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to plant a riparian buffer along 500 feet of a stream, located at the base of Cemetery Hill, which feeds the Yellow Breeches. The buffer will resemble a meadow; sycamore and other native trees will provide needed shade to keep the water cool for wildlife and to slow down erosion.

In addition, the grant will allow the College to install a rain garden in the area adjacent to the riparian buffer. This will catch runoff coming across the field from Grantham Road when that particular area floods. This half-acre rain garden will contain native plants that attract butterflies; it is expected to be completed by the end of summer.

Messiah College operates public wellness centers at three elderly housing locations throughout the school year – Hoy Towers in Steelton, Silver Spring Gardens and Courtyard in Mechanicsburg, and Green Meadow Apartments in Dillsburg. The centers are staffed by nursing faculty and students during their community health clinical rotation. Offered services include blood pressure screenings, weight and blood sugar checks, and pulse and respirations assessments.

To date, these centers have been only sporadically staffed during the summer months due to limited faculty and student resources. The $25,000 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant makes it possible to staff each center in the summer and, therefore, maintain important health-promotion relationships with the residents.  We are deeply grateful to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for partnering with Messiah College in support of these vital resources for our community.

Read more about Messiahs public wellness centers.

During a special First Friday event on March 5, the Harrisburg Institute awarded $50,000 grants to four new partnerships created among 15 Harrisburg youth organizations committed to working together to increase their mentoring efforts and outreach.

The partnerships – Allison Hill Mentoring Partnership, Mentoring Harrisburg’s Youth, After School Programming Expansion, and Pre-College Programming – are comprised of well-established city organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters, The Salvation Army, and the YMCA, among others.

The Mentoring Partnership of Central Pennsylvania was born of the combined efforts of more than 30 local non-profit organizations with a passion for youth mentoring. The Partnership seeks to provide guidance, ongoing training and support to organizations that provide interest-based mentoring programs to at-risk children and youth.

Read more about the Mentoring Partnership of Central Pennsylvania.
Read more about the Harrisburg Institute.

Richard Hughes, Senior Fellow at the Ernest L. Boyer Center at Messiah College, will assist the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) with its continuing research on the theological exploration of vocation—newly funded by a $2.4 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.—the second largest grant in CIC history.

Hughes will specifically assist in the research component that examines “The American College Presidency as Vocation.” From 2005 through 2009, the CIC held year-long seminar series on Presidential Vocation and Institutional Mission, aimed at helping college presidents, and those who aspire to presidencies, to align personal vocation and institutional mission through their work as leaders of independent institutions of higher education. The Lilly grant will allow the CIC to hold four additional, similar leadership development seminar series over the next five years for academic leaders in private higher education.

Hughes and William V. Frame, CIC senior advisor and president emeritus of Augsburg College, will interview past participants from the 2005-2009 seminars, seeking tangible evidence as to whether the program has made positive contributions to the satisfaction and durability of presidential life in America’s small and mid-size private colleges and universities. The research results will be shared with presidents and prospective presidents, their spouses, and others in all sectors of higher education, and will result in the publication of a new book, “The American College Presidency as Vocation.”

The final component of the CIC’s grant project will establish a “Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education” over six years. This initiative will connect colleges and universities who are committed to a sustained exploration of vocation through national and regional conferences, an exchange of resources and participation in online networking services.

For more details, read the CIC news release.

A state grant funds further development of WERCware, a device that allows individuals with high-functioning autism or Asperger’s to have a virtual coach in their places of employment.

Read more about this Collaboratory project.