RK Mellon Foundation allocates more than $2.5 million in grants to Pa. universities

The Richard King Mellon Foundation recently allocated more than $2.5 million in grants to 12 regional colleges and universities.

The grants can be used for a variety of expenses to address the covid-19 pandemic, including ensuring testing for students and staff, personal protective equipment, health care costs, enhanced virtual learning options and others.

“There’s a lot at stake here,” said Sam Reiman, foundation director.

Reiman said the grants — capped at $250,000 per school — are as much to help the communities surrounding colleges as the institutions themselves. When it comes to colleges and universities, he said, “we don’t often think of them as economic engines and as primary sources of jobs, of revenue for so many of the surrounding businesses.”

As early as March, Reiman said the foundation began considering ways to fund community members struggling due to the pandemic. They focused on three tiers, he said: emergency support for existing partners; economic impact and recovery; and health innovation and technology.

Reiman said the foundation’s support of the region’s colleges falls under the second tier, addressing the economic devastation the covid-19 shutdown has brought on businesses and community members.

“For many local businesses, their neighboring college is like the sun – and if that sun goes dark, there’s no backup generator,” he said in a news release. “We want to do everything we can to keep these colleges running.”

The Richard King Mellon Foundation began funding educational causes early in the pandemic, including a $1.3 million grant to the Pittsburgh Promise, a scholarship program for graduates of Pittsburgh Public Schools. Reiman said from there, the foundation began providing emergency operating support grants to other institutions, including Seton Hill University, Saint Vincent College and Westmoreland County Community College.

As the fall semester approached, Reiman said, leaders in the foundation decided to create one larger grant that could be split out to as many as 12 different institutions.

According to a news release, grants of $210,000 were awarded to 10 institutions in the area: Allegheny College, Carlow University, Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham University, Duquesne University, Grove City College, Robert Morris University, Susquehanna University, Washington & Jefferson College and Westminster College. The Community College of Allegheny County received a $150,000 grant. An additional grant to another school is pending.

The foundation’s announcement comes as several colleges around the country and locally walk back their plans for in-person learning. In the region, the University of Pittsburgh announced that in-person classes wouldn’t begin until at least Sept. 14, and Carnegie Mellon University said undergraduates would take classes remotely until Sept. 8. Pitt’s Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner also sent a letter to students warning them not to participate in parties.

Reiman said the funding, and the flexibility with which it can be used, will help universities in these scenarios, as they continuously search for the best response and most effective way to serve students, even as the daily situation changes.

He said each grant “empowers every one of our partners to be able to make some of those decisions and test things out in a different way.”

Each grant is contingent upon a dollar-for-dollar match by the school — so, about $5 million will have been raised in total.