Civic institute receives grant
The University of Indianapolis Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives has recently received a $500,000 grant for an annual symposium on civic leadership. The University of Indianapolis Office of Advancement secured the grant from the Fairbanks Foundation for an annual Richard M. Fairbanks Symposium on Civic Leadership.
A symposium is a meeting for the discussion of a particular subject, especially a meeting at which several speakers talk about or discuss a topic before an audience.
According to its website, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation is a privately funded foundation that awards grants to qualifying Indianapolis area organizations. The foundation focuses its funding efforts in three areas: health, the vitality of Indianapolis and sustainable employment. Other organizations to which the foundation has awarded grants include the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis Museum of Art and Wishard Hospital.
This particular grant is an important step for the civic institute, allowing it to make more in-depth plans than previously possible.
“This grant represents the first significant chunk of outside money. Up until this point, we had been thinking in the future tense. But this grant helps us to think about implementing the institute,” said Interim Director of the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and Associate Professor of History and Political Science Edward Frantz.
The grant also shows the community that a group outside of UIndy is devoted to furthering this project and its vision.
“[The grant] gives us external validation that shows that other people recognize the value of the institute and shows, given the amount of the grant, how strongly [the Fairbanks Foundation] believes in the institution,” Frantz said.
According to a UIndy news release, the institute will be a hub for research, teaching and public conversation, with resources for students, scholars, city planners and community leaders to explore the issues facing today’s urban centers. The institute will have two components, the mayoral archives and the symposium. The mayoral archives will chronicle the careers of four Indianapolis mayors, whose mayoral papers will be catalogued in a renovated area of the Krannert Memorial Library.
The symposium will be an annual conversation similar to the “Five Mayors” forum that took place in March 2011 and featured four former Indianapolis mayors and the current mayor, Greg Ballard. The symposium will talk about the past of Indianapolis leadership in order to educate, innovate and advocate for future leadership. The symposium will be different from the city’s current leadership programs, in that it will focus on building leadership at the college level.
“There are various leadership institutes around town, but we aren’t looking at their target audience. We are looking at [college-age students],” said Vice President for University Advancement James Smith. “We want this institute to be part of the fabric of [the] student experience at the university, and we want to show that civic leadership is an important service [for the community].”
The symposium will build upon past civic leadership and help form the future leaders of Indianapolis, the nation and the world by serving UIndy students and government scholars. In addition to promoting leadership, the institute will build on the UIndy’s reputation to develop major programs.
“I see this as an opportunity for major growth in the arts and sciences and hopefully in the History and Political Science Department,” Frantz said. “I am hopeful that people will see this grant, along with the announcement of the new president, as part of a package of exciting things to come from the university.”
