Posted on February 26, 2004

Lilly Endowment Announces $100 Million Indiana Higher Education Initiative

The Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment has announced a $100 million initiative to attract top scholars and students to Indiana colleges, the Indianapolis Star reports.

Through the program, the state's seven public universities and thirty of its private colleges will be invited to propose ways to invest more money in faculty, researchers, visiting fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, and administrators. They also will be invited to request funds to renovate and equip teaching and research facilities in order to make them more attractive to top scholars and students nationwide. The amount individual universities and colleges receive will be based on their enrollment.

"This is extraordinary because it gives the institution the latitude to treat this as an endowment and invest it and use the income over time," said Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education, a national education organization based in Washington, D.C. "This kind of money is no longer readily available."