Irvine Foundation Awards $1.1 Million for Caltech Diversity Effort

PASADENA—The James Irvine Foundation has awarded the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) $1,100,000 to continue the Irvine Minority Graduate Fellowships Program as well as to support new and ongoing faculty and student diversity programs and community outreach.

The award will help fund 7 two-year Minority Graduate Fellowships, help attract and retain faculty of color, support 5 Minority Undergraduate Research Fellowships (MURF), and will continue some funding of the Young Engineering and Science Scholars program (YESS) and the Caltech/Community Outreach effort to disseminate information throughout the community about Caltech's effort. The Pasadena community provides Caltech students with many opportunities to do community service in a multicultural setting. This funding will allow the Institute to develop new opportunities and to continue to expand tutoring services which Caltech students offer to students in local public schools.

"This grant will help enhance a multicultural presence at Caltech," said Steven E. Koonin, Caltech vice president and provost. "We thank the Irvine Foundation for its continued support. For our part, we know that providing positive role models is essential. This grant could have a lasting impact on minority participation in science and engineering. The Irvine Foundation's generosity allows us to be more proactive in our outreach to historically black colleges and to schools with high concentrations of Hispanic and Native American undergraduates. We look forward to our continued partnership with the Foundation in this critically important endeavor."

The James Irvine Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the social, economic, and physical quality of life throughout California, and to enriching the state's intellectual and cultural environment.

The California Institute of Technology is a small, independent university that carries on instruction in science and engineering for a student body of 900 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students. With an outstanding faculty, including two Nobel Laureates, and such off-campus facilities as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Palomar Observatory, and the W.M. Keck Observatory, Caltech is one of the world's major research centers, focusing on those areas in which it has the faculty and facilities to excel.