Rhodes College receives $800k for new Institute for Race and Social Transformation

Rhodes College will get an $800,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, the college announced Friday. The grant is to establish the Institute for Race and Social Transformation, which will serve as a hub for research and curricular development focusing on racial equity, discrimination and justice in Memphis and the Mid-South.

The three-year grant will fund work and activities like documenting stories of Memphians who are "absent" from the narrative about the city, expand faculty and students trained to do racial justice research and advocacy and work with racial justice missions of local non-governmental organizations.

"We strive to empower students, faculty, staff, and community members to address contemporary social issues through intellectual inquiry, reflective dialogue, and community action," Rhodes College President Jennifer Collins said in a statement.

In addition to the work and activities, the grant will also support an annual Race and Social Transformation Symposium put on by the college as well as summer fellowships for Rhodes students and students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Dr. Natalie Person, dean for curricular development at Rhodes College, will serve as director of the institute.

The institute will be located on the West Campus, where many of the college's community-facing programs reside.

This announcement of the grant came the day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action programs at two universities, which will have ripple effects on admissions processes ― particularly on if and how institutions can think about the race or ethnicity of applicants ― at higher education institutions across the country. Linda Bonnin, vice president for marketing and communications at Rhodes, said in an email the programs that will come from the new institute at Rhodes will not be impacted by the ruling.

Brooke Muckerman covers county government for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached via email at Brooke.Muckerman@CommercialAppeal.com followed on Twitter @BrookeMuckerman.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Rhodes College gets $800Kbfor institute on racial justice in Mid-South