Campus recieves $3.3 million in grants for sponsored projects

GC received $3.3 million in grant money for the 2011 fiscal year, which is exactly one million dollars over last year’s $2.3 million.

Robin Lewis, director of the office of grants and sponsored projects, has worked in grants for 17 years and is proud to report the earnings.

“The $3.3 million dollars was a result of 35 grants awarded to GC ,” Lewis said. “Some awards were as small as $3,500 and others as large as one million.”

Lewis began her work in grants at GC in July of 2010 and continues to give support to anyone applying for a grant through the school. The office helps find grants for interested individuals and assists in the application process.

“We are a full support office, so we help to start and finish a grant,” Lewis said. “Our office is a resource for anyone, and we help make the most competitive application possible.”

The office supports the students and faculty of GC and is also very involved in community outreach.

“It is part of our mission to invest in our community,” Lewis said. “We believe it improves everything.”

A recent grant achieved through the office has been a collaborative grant with Communities and Schools, The GIVE Center, Baldwin Early Learning Center, Central Georgia Tech and the Oconee Prevention Council. The grant will go towards an after-school program for kindergarten students.

Sandy Baxter, executive director of communities in schools, has worked with GC for almost two years.

“Once a child gets behind in kindergarten they never catch up,” Baxter said. “We hope through this program we can help with lowering the dropout rate.”

The grant is awarded through the Governor’s Office of Children and Families, and it has the potential of being a three year grant. It is worth $86,000 the first year and $66,000 the next two years.

“Our partnership is so great,” Baxter said. “We are very fortunate to have the office of grants on our team.”

Recently the office has started a new program called Grantsmanship sessions to help individuals with the grant writing process. They are offering a series of classes centered on finding and applying for grants.

Kate Pope, archival associate for Special Collections at the Library and Instructional Technology Center, has benefited from these classes.

“The sessions have been a valuable tool in improving my own grant writing abilities,” Pope said.

Pope applied for a $6,000 grant through the National Endowment Preservation Assistance grant program to benefit the library. She is hoping the library can use the grant to bring in a consultant to access the archives.

“We want to become better educated in preserving our own collection,” Pope said. “The office of grants has been great to work with on this process.”

The grant writing process is often tedious and can sometimes take as long as a week to perfect and finish.

“The process is hard to handle at first,” Baxter said. “The office of grants helps you through it, and I couldn’t ask for better support.”

Posted by Julia Richardson on Nov 10 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.