Indiana’s higher education institutions play a critical role in building intellectual capital for the state, which is essential for the state’s economic vitality and the flourishing of its people and communities. Through grants on an invitational basis to Indiana’s higher education institutions, the Endowment helps them create first class facilities, attract and retain top research and teaching talent, and enhance the academic experiences of their students.
Indiana Collaborative Initiative for Talent Enrichment (INCITE), supported by a $25 million Endowment grant to Indiana University Foundation, is a collaboration between Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine, Indiana Biosciences Research Institute and non-academic partners such as Eli Lilly and Co., Corteva, Cook Group, BioCrossroads, Elanco and IU Health. Through INCITE, the School of Medicine is hiring biomedical scientists who will seek to enhance research and education at the school and strengthen the economic health of Indiana’s broader life sciences community. These collaborations are focusing on several key research areas that build on existing strengths and opportunities for growth including applications for genomic medicine and new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. LEARN MORE
Purdue University’s Gateway Complex Initiative, supported in part by a $40 million Endowment grant, enables the university to continue to develop programs and support students enrolled in its College of Engineering and Polytechnic Institute with state-of-the-art facilities located at the “Gateway” to Purdue’s West Lafayette (IN) campus. The facilities under development include virtual labs, space for Indiana employers to engage students and classroom space to accommodate increased enrollment. This grant follows a $40 million Endowment grant in 2014 to help Purdue build collaborative design studios for engineering and technology students and other innovative teaching and learning spaces; expand Maurice J. Zucrow Labs, the nation’s largest university propulsion lab facility; fund Flex Lab to enable engineering faculty to collaborate more effectively on research; and create an active learning center to strengthen student outcomes. LEARN MORE
Charting the Future for Indiana Colleges and Universities is an Endowment initiative designed to help leaders of the state’s 38 colleges and universities engage in thoughtful discernment about the future of their institutions and advance strategic planning and implementation efforts to address key challenges and opportunities. The Endowment allocated $108.2 million for the initiative, which included planning grants, implementation grants and the opportunity to apply for additional funds on a competitive basis to support large-scale projects. The Endowment encouraged college and university leaders to consider collaborative approaches to help address challenges and opportunities facing higher education. Challenges identified by the colleges and universities include declines in enrollment, the need to more effectively serve increasingly diverse student bodies, increased use of and demand for online learning, and competition from job-training programs.
Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP), with support from a $36 million Endowment grant to the CICP Foundation, is leading the implementation of strategies to build a connected, collaborative digital technology ecosystem in Indianapolis. CICP’s efforts, in collaboration with Indiana’s research universities and some of its most significant businesses, are focused in large part on attracting, retaining and engaging talent, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and its components of machine and deep learning. LEARN MORE