NCWC News: Hillsdale Fund Awards North Carolina Wesleyan College $30,000 For Science

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June 10, 2004

Hillsdale Fund Awards North Carolina Wesleyan College

$30,000 For Science

Rocky Mount, N.C.—North Carolina Wesleyan College recently received a grant of $30,000 from the Hillsdale Fund to help the College continue to strengthen its science program. The gift will help Wesleyan enhance its biology and chemistry laboratory classes through the renovation of facilities and purchase of new equipment.

The grant ultimately helps to support Eastern North Carolina’s efforts to accommodate a growing emphasis on attracting technological and scientific jobs to the region.

The number of Wesleyan students who major in science has more than doubled in the past five years. Today, the science program, with its 98 majors in biology, chemistry, and premedicine, is second in popularity only to business administration. The science program is a center of excellence in academics that has attracted an unusually high percentage of women and minority students. Of Wesleyan’s current science majors, 57 percent are women, 43 percent are African-American, and 27 percent are African-American women. These figures contrast with national trends, which show alarmingly low numbers of women and African-Americans majoring in the sciences.

The Hillsdale Fund grant for science is the second generous gift that Wesleyan has received from Hillsdale. In the late 1980s, the Fund helped the College retain a part of the history of the region and its culture by supporting restoration of the 1817 Bellemonte House, which was moved to Wesleyan’s campus from adjacent farmland.

The Hillsdale Fund was established in North Carolina in 1963 by the family of Lunsford Richardson, founder of Vick Chemical Company, now Richardson-Vicks, Inc. Members of the Richardson family have established a total of seven philanthropic foundations that support education, social services, the arts, the environment, health care, religion, and media and communications.

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