Greenville, NC – Dr. David J. Siegel, Associate Professor in the College of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership, confirmed that the College of Education has been awarded a grant in the amount of $85,000 to be paid over 12 months by Lumina Foundation for Education. Lumina Foundation for education is an Indianapolis-based, private foundation dedicated to expanding access and success in education beyond high school. Siegel, who applied for the grant, is the study’s principal investigator. The college will begin receiving grant funds from Lumina in early October. The grant will be used to explore how inter-organizational partnerships involving universities, corporations, and nonprofits are helping to prepare underrepresented minority high school students for postsecondary education and beyond. “Understanding the partnership framework in a program like LEAD can give us a blueprint for organizing additional initiatives of this kind. There is great potential for application of the findings right here in Eastern North Carolina..” says Siegel.
The study will focus on the partnership dynamics in the Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Program in Business, which aims to introduce underrepresented minority high school juniors to business education and careers in business. LEAD is a consortium including the Philadelphia-based umbrella organization (LEAD Program in Business), eleven top American business schools that host residential Summer Business Institutes, and corporate sponsors that take an active role in the students’ educational experience and provide financial support.
Affiliated business schools participating in the study are the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), the University of Michigan (Ross), Northwestern (Kellogg), UCLA (Anderson), Duke University (Fuqua), the University of Minnesota (Carlson), the University of Virginia (Darden), Dartmouth (Tuck), Cornell University (Johnson), the University of Illinois, and Stanford University. These schools host thirty students each for a three to four week Summer Business Institute. Students learn the basics of a range of subjects – accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, operations, and ethics among them – from senior business faculty. They also receive tips on applying to college and have unique and exciting opportunities to interact with corporate sponsors through site-visits and in-class presentations. In all, thirty-four major corporations and foundations support LEAD, including GlaxoSmithKline, ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor Company, and General Mills. The project’s central objectives over the next 12 months will be to study, document, and share the partnership dynamics at work in the eleven LEAD business schools. A book detailing and analyzing the partnership experience will also be produced from the study. Key questions to be addressed over the next twelve months are the following: What difference does the LEAD experience make for those involved? What are the motivations for each of the partners to become involved in LEAD? How is the post-Grutter legal and policy environment shaping such initiatives? What are the different expectations that partners bring to the table, and how are these satisfied or addressed? What constitutes success from each of the partner perspectives, and how do these different pictures of success get negotiated in the actual conduct of the program? In general, how is this pipeline development program addressing K-12 student preparedness, college admissions of a more diverse population, and diversity initiatives within companies?
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For more information, please contact Jessica Davenport, Communications Director for the College of Education at 252-328-2179.
