Posted on February 5, 2012

Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Commits $2.3 Million to Summer Education Programs

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in Lansdowne, Virginia, has announced grants totaling $2.3 million to ten summer enrichment programs for talented, low-income middle and high school students in rural and urban communities across the United States.

Ranging from $100,000 to $250,000, the grants will be awarded to organizations working to provide rigorous learning experiences in the sciences, humanities, and math for more than seven hundred students across the country. Awards include $250,000 to the College of William and Mary's Center for Gifted Education for a three-week residential math program for promising New York City eighth graders; $250,000 to the University of California Berkeley to expand access to its six-week math, writing, and engineering Pre-College Academy program to a hundred more students from underserved urban high schools; and $189,902 to Northfield, Minnesota-based Carleton College to offer high school students intensive study in writing, science, and quantitative reasoning. In most cases, the foundation intends to renew the awards for two additional years.

"This initiative is part of our mission to find and assist high-potential youth in under-served communities," said JKCF executive director Lawrence Kutner. "What's particularly exciting is that these summer programs will involve talented students in fields such as robotics, environmental science, and philosophy — subjects that are unlikely to be part of their high school curricula."

For more information about the awardees, visit the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Web site.