Albright College is the recipient of a $100,000 grant from the George I. Alden Trust in support of the College’s conversion of the Rockland Professional Center to a modern, technologically advanced academic facility.
The grant, the largest Albright has ever received from the Alden Trust, was secured as part of That Their Light May Shine: The Campaign for Albright College, the most ambitious fundraising initiative in the College’s history.
The renovation and adaptive reuse of the building will result in the relocation of the departments of Economics and Business, Accounting and Political Science, as well as the Center for Excellence in Local Government, to Rockland, and will introduce Albright’s new Center for Civic and Global Engagement. The College’s Office of Accelerated Degree Programs, which was relocated to the building last year, will remain.
Construction on 30,000 square feet of state-of-the-art classrooms, offices and meeting spaces began last summer. The new facility, to be known as the Center for Business, Civic and Global Leadership, will be ready for the start of the fall 2014 semester.
Located in Worcester, Mass., the Alden Trust gives priority to higher education, predominately in support of independent undergraduate education, in smaller institutions with full-time traditional undergraduate enrollments of at least 1,000 students and with a total undergraduate and graduate student population of under 5,000. The organization’s trustees focus their grant making on capital needs, supporting institutions that demonstrate a combination of educational excellence, exciting programming, and efficient and effective administration. They primarily support proposals that they feel will contribute significantly to the intellectual growth of students and will enhance an institution’s mission, with particular emphasis on George Alden’s expressed desire to ‘do the greatest good for the greatest number of beneficiaries.’
The Alden Trust has supported capital projects at Albright for more than two decades, and the Rockland initiative fits well with the trust’s focus. The modern learning space will enhance synergy and collaboration among related departments, house programs that serve the campus community and conduct community outreach, and showcase the interdisciplinary, collaborative approach that is at the heart of the Albright educational experience.
With a goal of $55 million, That Their Light May Shine seeks to revitalize and expand instructional and service facilities to enable faculty and students to teach, learn and collaborate to their full potential; increase Albright’s endowment to remove financial barriers for needy students, attract and retain teacher-scholars who are eager to collaborate, and fund Albright’s distinguished approach to interdisciplinary study; and augment the College’s operating budget through annual gifts that provide essential resources that benefit all students. For more information, see www.albright.edu/campaign.
