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NEW YORK--September 9, 1996 -- Sixty-eight colleges, universities and other educational institutions in New York and New England will receive Excellence in Education Awards totaling $1.2 million from the NYNEX Foundation for providing special programs that utilize computers and telecommunication technology to help students and teachers improve their skills.
The awards, which range from $5,000 to $50,000, will help fund a wide variety of programs. They include writing workshops for secondary and high school students; enriched courses for talented students from low-income families; and training for teachers to upgrade their computer skills, teach them how to use the Internet and to create multi-media projects.
The two largest awards of $50,000 each will go to Long Island University's CW Post Campus in New York and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
The LIU award will help fund the university's Electronic Education Village in which secondary school teachers and students in Long Island and Queens will collaborate on a special research project with LIU faculty members and specialists at Long Island libraries, museums and other cultural institutions.
The participants will use a computer network, the Internet and teleconferencing to discuss and design theoretical models of what Long Island will be like in the future by focusing on the area's economy, culture and natural resources. The participating students will also create interactive pages on the Internet's World Wide Web. The Mount Holyoke award will help fund computer and multi-media training for 25 teachers in the Springfield Public School System who participate in Reach for the Future II. This program is aimed at improving the math, science and writing skills of middle school students who are disadvantaged and at risk of dropping out of school. The teachers will learn how to evaluate software, databases and multi-media applications and how to integrate them into the classroom to enhance the reasoning, writing and collaborative learning skills of students.
"In addition to utilizing technology as a tool in the classroom, all of the award-winning programs are committed to challenging the traditional assumptions about education and re-examining the way teachers teach and students learn," said Suzanne DuBose, the NYNEX Foundation's vice president for programs.
"NYNEX believes that the innovations developed by these programs will stimulate change and help improve the quality of education in localities throughout New York and New England," she said.
NYNEX began the Excellence in Education Awards program four years ago and expanded it this year. Eligibility for the awards was extended to a variety of educational institutions, including state universities and community colleges, and the funding for the awards was increased by $500,000 -- from $700,000 last year to $1.2 million this year.
Nearly 200 educational institutions applied for the awards.
The NYNEX Foundation provides $3.1 million a year in grants for educational initiatives.
As part of NYNEX's long-standing commitment to assisting efforts to improve the quality of education in its region, the corporation also provides funding for a variety of other educational initiatives. These initiatives include:
-- Providing $1.4 million in scholarships to colleges, universities and technical institutes. NYNEX also provides summer internships and mentors to some of the scholarship winners.
-- NYNEX employees along with the NYNEX Pioneers will volunteer to help wire school classrooms and libraries for computers on Sept. 21st as part of Gov. Pataki's program, NYWired. The program is the first step toward bringing computer and telecommunications technology to public and private schools and libraries throughout New York State.
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