George Vrtis, assistant professor of environmental studies and history at Carleton College, along with professor Chris Wells of Macalester College, have received a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) for $102,522. The partnership grant, one of the two largest awarded by the MHS in this grant round, will substantially advance the state of scholarship on Minnesota’s under-studied environmental history.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is awarding $189,902 to Carleton College in support of the Summer Connections project, which will provide need-based scholarships for high-achieving, low-income high-school students to attend Carleton summer academic programs. The grant, renewable for up to three years, will increase Carleton’s ability to make summer programs available to students who otherwise would not be able to attend due to financial reasons. In summer 2012, the grant will provide scholarship funding for 41 eligible students. The grant will also provide support for national publicity about the program and staffing to help administer scholarship program expansion.

Laurence Cooper, associate professor of political science, has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a new freshman seminar, “Cosmos or Chaos: View of the World, Views of the Good Life,” which addresses the question of what it means to live well. Students in the course will consider key visions of the character of the world and of how to live a good life, as developed though extensive reading, discussion, and writing about Homer, Plato and Aristotle, the Biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, and the Gospel of Matthew, Augustine’s Confessions, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and other notable thinkers.

Natalie Khazaal, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Arabic, has just received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Professor Khazaal will be working on the Lebanese dialect portion of the UCLA project to develop on-line Arabic modules.

Natalie Khazaal, visiting professor of Arabic, is a subawardee of a U.S. Department of Education grant awarded to the UCLA International Institute. UCLA’s project “Listen and Learn: Teaching Arabic, Persian, and Turkish in America’s Middle and High Schools” is one of eleven projects receiving funds in 2008 from the USDE’s International Research and Studies Program. Khazaal will develop on-line Arabic Lebanese dialect modules.

Performance Activities Coordinator in Music and Adjunct Instructor in Chinese Musical Instruments Gao Hong has been awarded her second Subito award from the American Composers Forum. The Subito Award is a grant designed to support new and outstanding composers and performers. This award will support her upcoming CD project.

Carleton’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) $1.5 million grant, announced on April 22, was covered by Minnesota Public Radio’s website. Carleton is using part of the $1.5 million grant from HHMI to prepare its students to move beyond traditional approaches to address real-world scientific complexity.

Gao Hong was recently awarded an honorary guest professor position at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Others who have received this distinction include Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Seiji Ozawa, Tan Dun, and others.

She was also awarded a MetLife Creative Connections Grant from Meet the Composer, Inc. in New York City to support outreach efforts associated with her upcoming concerts at the Ted Mann Hall at the University of Minnesota (April 19), the Weill Recital Hal at Carnegie Hall (April 27), and for the St. Louis Classical Guitar Society (May 10).

When Carey Tinkelenberg ‘05 decided to attend Carleton College in 2001, she left behind more than her family and high school friends. A nationally competitive figure skater with the Skating Club of Boston, the decision to come to Carleton also meant passing up the opportunity to perform as Belle in “Beauty and the Beast” on a European tour of Disney on Ice.