Lockwood Foundation honors BC faculty excellence

In conjunction with the Lockwood Foundation, the Bellevue College Foundation seeks applications for grants to promote faculty excellence and innovation. Grants are awarded annually to BC faculty members whose ongoing projects promote innovation in teaching or advance entrepreneurial models at BC.  Grants typically range from $2,500 to $10,000. Faculty members must submit applications no later than 4:00 p.m. on February 28.

According to Lauren Hardin, scholarship and programs manager for the Bellevue College Foundation, “the reason the grant amounts vary so widely is due to the fact that the committee will often award multiple applications. The committee has a total of $10,000 per year to award and they can split it as they see fit amongst applicants.

Sometimes all applicants will get funds and other times only one or two. It varies each year.” In July 2016, professors Fernando Perez and Kyle Barber each received a $5,000 grant.

Perez is a faculty member with the BC English department. His award was in connection with the inaugural BC art walk. According to the BC website, the art walk started in May 2016, and is designed to “position Bellevue College as an engaging cultural hub in which academics in all disciplines foster cultural and social understandings through creative synergy.”

Barber received a grant to support DECA participation. As a faculty member with BC’s Marketing Management program, Barber serves as executive director and head coach for BC’s DECA program. According to the BC website, DECA is an international association of college students and teachers of marketing, business, finance, hospitality and entrepreneurship that prepares students professionally through competitions.

In 2015, Professor Tim Jones, chair of BC’s political science program received a Lockwood Foundation grant to support the Northwest Social Justice Pilgrimage. The pilgrimage takes students on an eight-day trip through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas to help them gain a better understanding of the civil rights movement, according to the June 2015 edition of the BC magazine Exceptional. That same year, Professor Terry Hatcher, diagnostic ultrasound program chair at BC, received a grant for “Vascular Modeling: Bridging the Gap to Sonographic Human Models.” She previously received a Lockwood Foundation grant in 2013 for ultrasound probe technology.

These grants are made available through the generosity of the Byron and Alice Lockwood Foundation, which supports education, health and human services organizations based on the founders’ wishes. The foundation was established in 1968 at the request of the Lockwoods, who lived in the greater Seattle area and operated timber businesses and real estate in King and Snohomish counties.

In awarding the grants, the committee considers the clarity of project goals and feasibility of achieving them, long term sustainability of the proposed project and its value to BC, innovation of instructional models, and applicability to BC’s strategic plan and advancement of the pluralism initiative. Projects should generate materials that can be shared with colleagues.

Applications are available on the BC website. Questions should be directed to Hardin at lauren.hardin@bellevuecollege.edu.