News Releases
April 6, 2004
Antioch Receives Additional $875,000 for Early College High School Initiative for Native Youth
Seattle — Antioch University Seattle has received an additional $875,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to support its work in establishing eight "early college high schools" to serve Native American students in Washington state.
In March 2002 Antioch received a five-year, $3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as a $300,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation, to create early college high schools that blend the last two years of high school with the first two years of college.
“The second grant from Kellogg allows us to reach our goal of involving native families in the education of their youth and having aspects of the tribe’s local culture become visible in the curriculum,” said early college Project Director Linda Campbell, Ph.D.
The Kellogg grant will support Antioch's community engagement work with key early college stakeholders. Stakeholders include tribal community members, tribal culture committee representatives, higher education and high school personnel, and secondary students. The stakeholders will collaboratively shape the early college high schools to meet Native American students' needs and integrate local culture into the schools’ curricula as the tribes consider appropriate.
About the Early College High Schools
The purpose of the eight early college high schools is to provide rigorous, culturally congruent, liberal arts education that prepares the schools' graduates to enter four-year colleges or universities as juniors. The schools will incorporate research-based practices and respect for traditional Native American values so that students are prepared to serve as leaders in their communities.
Antioch's work is part of a national initiative to launch 130 early college high schools over five years, beginning in fall 2002. Other funders include the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. For more information about the Early College High School Initiative, visit www.earlycolleges.org.
About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Antioch's grant emerges from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's commitment to improve educational opportunities for Native American and other peoples. Since the foundation's inception in 1930 by W.K. Kellogg, the cereal industry pioneer, the organization has focused on building the capacity of individuals, communities and institutions to solve their own problems. The early college project attempts to increase the college graduation rates of native youth.
About Antioch
At Antioch University Seattle, adult learners find individualized, innovative programs with a commitment to academic excellence, community service and social justice. AUS is one of six campuses of Antioch University, founded in 1852 in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Horace Mann, noted abolitionist and first president of Antioch College, gave a charge to the class of 1859 that is repeated to each Antioch graduating class: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
