Published: October 22, 2009

An average level of enrollment of freshmen and returning students this year has allowed the Faculty Challenge Grants to be distributed to professors after months of uncertainty. According to Rev. Robert R. Grimes, S.J., dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC), the possibility of withholding the grants was never a definite, but was instead a “matter of caution.”

The Challenge Fund is “designed to support faculty in carrying out projects that will enhance curriculum and teaching,” according to the 2009-2010 Undergraduate Faculty Handbook. Faculty members submit their proposals in the February and March of the spring term for projects they anticipate taking on the next fall.

Proposals typically include requests for new courses, undergraduate research assistants, lecture series and special workshops, conferences and additional materials to enhance coursework. For example, the theater and visual arts departments often request Challenge Grant funds to bring outside lecturers into FCLC to speak to the students.

Grimes said that the proposals were submitted in the normal manner last semester, but no decision as to which requests would be granted, if any, was made. “We needed to wait and see what the financial situation [was for] the fall,” Grimes said.

The main determining factor in this decision-making process, Grimes said, was the size of the freshman class. If the incoming class had been much smaller than anticipated, he would have had to make budget cuts, and these gaps would have had to have been filled with the money saved by not distributing the Challenge Grants.

Fortunately, the freshman class turned out to be “very close to the number of students we had budgeted for,” Grimes said, so the Challenge Grants did not have to be cut.

The grants are available to full-time faculty and adjunct faculty who have taught at least six courses in the past six semesters. A faculty committee selects which projects they think are best, and then Grimes does another review, taking their recommendations into consideration, and makes a final decision.

Grimes said that he almost always follows all of their affirmations, and even approves of some proposals that the committee turned down due to financial concerns. This year, not every proposal was approved, but Grimes said that that is on par with other years.

Although the enrollment situation is positive this year, “We are not out of the woods yet,” Grimes said. Recruitment of next year’s class is anticipated to be even more difficult than this year. “[This year’s freshman class] had already decided where they wanted to go to college before the economic downturn,” he said. “Now people are looking with a fresh eye.”