Early childhood education in Howard County gets 1.5 million dollars
September 21, 2005
KOKOMO, Ind.—A $1.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. will allow Indiana University Kokomo and the Community Foundation of Howard County to create an early childhood education center at the IU Kokomo campus. The grant was one of 18 new Community Alliances to Promote Education (CAPE) grants, announced September 21 by Lilly Endowment. Established in 1999, the CAPE initiative is aimed at boosting educational attainment throughout Indiana, by helping individual counties address their area's most compelling education needs.
The early childhood education center will work with educators in pre-school through grade 12 (P–12), child-care providers, families, and libraries to promote best practices in preparing youngsters to enter kindergarten.
“I'm incredibly thrilled that we have been chosen to receive a CAPE grant from Lilly Endowment,” said Chancellor Ruth J. Person. “It is especially exciting because it is a result of a collaborative effort between the Community Foundation of Howard County and Indiana University Kokomo.”
The $1.5 million grant, which will be received over the next five years, provides “an exceptional opportunity to make a real difference for Howard County,” said Community Foundation President Ron Harper. “We have known for a long time that there is a really significant gap in the number of students who show up for kindergarten and fail to meet the basic measures that show they are ready to learn,” he said. Many children lack primary skills, such as being able to recognize letters, numbers, and colors.
Catching up with their more prepared classmates becomes “almost impossible” for some, Harper added. “If students don't learn certain literacy and numeracy skills by the time they are in third grade, they generally fall behind progressively faster.” Such students often disengage from the education system, seek out other “poor performers” as social peers, and can turn to antisocial behaviors, he said. “In Howard County, we cannot afford to lose that productivity for our citizens or our workforce.”
IU Kokomo Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Stuart Green said the early childhood education center could start operations as soon as spring 2006. “We envision the center as a place where faculty expertise can interact with and support community needs and goals. Although IU Kokomo will operate the center, it will be a true partnership, engaging our colleagues in P–12 education, area public libraries, and our children's first teachers—their parents.”
In November, IU Kokomo will send the IU Board of Trustees a proposal for a Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Education degree. “The demand for this degree resonates with the concerns and goals of the CAPE grant,” Green said. “IU Kokomo students in this degree program, as well as Ivy Tech State College students in its associate degree in early childhood program, will be extensively involved in grant activities.”
Representatives of several community groups concerned with early childhood development contributed months of work to write and refine the CAPE grant proposal, according to Harper. “A lot of non-profit organizations, educators, and folks from Ivy Tech and IU Kokomo came together around this idea,” he said. “The early childhood education center seemed a natural way to attack the issue.”
That massing of community interest, plus the available resources of IU Kokomo's Division of Education, resulted in a well-written, convincing grant proposal, Harper said. “The use of IU Kokomo education students as center interns—persons who can be interacting directly with families and educators—was a definite plus,” he said. Harper also praised IU Kokomo faculty and administrators Shirley Aamidor, Loren Henry, Sharon Calhoon, Tim Sehr, and Stuart Green for helping craft the proposal's language, and its assessment mechanisms.
The Indiana University Foundation will administer the CAPE grant. Three hundred thousand dollars will be set aside as a permanent endowment for center operations; the Community Foundation will serve as endowment's custodian. The Community Foundation will also be represented on a local advisory board for the center.
For more information about early childhood education opportunities through Indiana University Kokomo, contact Stuart Green at sgreen@iuk.edu or (765) 455-9227.
