The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded �ֲ���ý College a $1.2 million grant to support the faculty’s ongoing work to strengthen the college’s humanities and humanistic social sciences curriculum and teaching.

The five-year grant will fund strategies to create a 21st-century curriculum, support the faculty’s capacity to more effectively teach and mentor a diverse student population, and remove barriers to academic success particularly experienced by students from marginalized groups.

“This grant comes at a crucial moment for �ֲ���ý,” said President Clayton Spencer. “Moving forward, we must ensure that our teaching and curriculum excite the interest and creativity of all of our students, preparing them to function as leaders in a pluralistic society.”

“�ֲ���ý is committed to being a national leader in liberal arts education, and the Mellon grant is another example of the way our colleagues in the humanities and humanistic sciences are engaging in the national dialogue,” said Malcolm Hill, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs.

The new Mellon Foundation grant “affords new opportunities to build inclusive curricula,” says Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, seen introducing professors at a Back to �ֲ���ý academics panel in October. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“Our faculty already employ powerful pedagogies, conduct consequential scholarship, and enrich the world with inspired creations,” he added. “The Mellon grant affords us new opportunities to build inclusive curricula to ensure that all students have access to these important fields of study. I am excited to support these efforts in the coming years.”

A major thrust of the grant-funded work will be to evaluate and strengthen the curriculum in many of the college’s 22 departments and programs in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, the latter including social and behavioral disciplines, such as history and sociology, that often explore the human experience through methods akin to the humanities.

“Their hope is to go beyond a ‘checklist’ approach and instead address equity and inclusion in a comprehensive way.”

“The �ֲ���ý faculty have already been deeply engaged in discussions about how best to transform the curriculum to include a stronger focus on equity and inclusion. At each turn, their hope is to go beyond a ‘checklist’ approach and instead address equity and inclusion in a comprehensive way,” said Professor of Psychology Kathryn Graff Low, who served as interim dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs in 2017–18. “As such, �ֲ���ý is in a strong position to make the most of this new Mellon grant.”

Specifically, the new grant will fund a series of “Curriculum Transformation Grants” that will enable the faculty, from a holistic perspective, to assess their curricula, courses, syllabi, and major requirements while following best practices for inclusive course design and pedagogy.

The curricular-revision work will also leverage existing best practices in three distinctive areas of the �ֲ���ý curriculum — First-Year Seminars, the Short Term (Re)Design program, and community-engaged courses — to ensure that all points of student contact with the curriculum emphasize critical thinking about power and privilege and reflect an approach to teaching and learning that invites student engagement.

Jahmari Josiah ’20 of the Bronx, N.Y., leads a discussion for the course “Community Organizing for Social Justice,” taught by Associate Professor of Education Mara Tieken and focusing on the theory and practice of community organizing for social or political change. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Beyond courses and curricula, the Mellon grant will also support the creation of learning communities and other programs to help the faculty lead discussions about self-awareness, power, and structural barriers to success in the classroom.

“Over the past few years, we have begun to develop a sustainable network of well-trained faculty who are ready to reach out to their colleagues with advice and guidance on how inclusion, equity, and diversity play out in course design, pedagogy, and the mission of the college itself,” said Melinda Plastas, a �ֲ���ý faculty member in gender and sexuality studies and a key designer of the Mellon grant proposal.

“The grant will allow us to expand our network and deepen the faculty’s shared understanding of the path to transform learning at �ֲ���ý.”

Faculty member Melinda Plastas, a key designer of the Mellon grant proposal, watches as award-winning choreographer and dancer Sean Dorsey works with her students in October 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In recent years, �ֲ���ý has received significant new gifts and grants to fund institution-wide work to redefine academic excellence in a way that encompasses greater equity and inclusion in the college’s academic programs.

In 2015, the college received a $1 million Mellon grant to advance faculty diversity and, in 2013, a $1 million Mellon grant to support innovative approaches to teaching and research in the humanities. �ֲ���ý is also a leading member of the Creating Connections Consortium, which received a $5.5 million Mellon grant in 2017 to help to prepare young scholars from underrepresented groups for careers in liberal arts colleges.

In the sciences, �ֲ���ý recently won a $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to transform its STEM culture to better support all students in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In September, �ֲ���ý announced a new professorship dedicated to bringing greater equity and inclusion to the STEM disciplines.

The gifts and grants are all part of the college’s ongoing fundraising initiative, The �ֲ���ý Campaign, a multi-year effort to secure the programs and values that have defined �ֲ���ý for a century and a half and to shape new strategies for a new age.

Janet Bourne, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, teaches Music Theory II in the Olin Arts Center on March 30, 2016. Bourne was recruited to help integrate music cognition into the music theory curriculum. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Why is it that many of us can recognize the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” or Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” from the very first notes?

Why doesn’t country star Mel Tillis’ speech impediment affect his singing?

Why do we hear some sounds as music and others as noise? Why do we disagree about which is which? And how exactly does music make us feel happy or sad?

Such questions are the province of music cognition, a field of study that harnesses musicology, psychology, neuroscience, and other disciplines to understand music’s workings in the brain. The field has blossomed in the last 20 or 25 years, says Bill Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music — even as cognitive science, in general, has been redefined by sophisticated neurological scanning capabilities and other technological advances.

William Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at �ֲ���ý, is developing a music cognition textbook. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý is humming along with this fascinating field. Matthews has introduced the topic into the music theory curriculum over the last several years, even developing a textbook. Associate Professor Gina Fatone’s research lies in the intersection of cognitive science and musical experience.

Their colleague James Parakilas, James L. Moody, Jr. Family Professor of Performing Arts, designed a course called “Music and Mind” that has become one of the music department’s most popular offerings.

And now �ֲ���ý is taking steps to formally integrate music cognition into the four-course theory curriculum, thanks to a pedagogy innovation program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The college last year recruited a music cognition expert to help with that process: Janet Bourne, one of �ֲ���ý’ Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows in the Humanities.

As evidenced by the success of Parakilas’ course, cognition in the musical context has a strong appeal to students, especially those focusing on psychology and neuroscience, as well as music. “It’s one of those things that can be personally compelling and then it turns into an academic interest,” says Fatone, the department chair. “Music is important to everybody on a very, very personal level.”

“I wonder all the time while I’m playing how music works and what’s going on in my brain,” says trumpeter and pianist Grace Link ’19 of Montclair, N.J. Eager to study both music and neuroscience, she is taking Music Theory II this semester with Bourne, who has introduced a solid dose of music cognition into the course.

Assigned to adapt a pop song to an 18th-century idiom, Will McPherson ’18 chose the Beatles’ “Girl” (Lennon-McCartney).

“I find muscle memory and learning a piece of music so fascinating,” Link says — “how you can learn something complicated and be able to play it back. And also how our brain receives different types of music, and the interactions and the emotions it triggers. I think it’s all really cool.”

Bourne, who earned a doctorate in music theory and cognition from Northwestern last year, has an active role in building music cognition into the curriculum. She’s collaborating with music faculty to create learning objectives and assessments, as well as an evaluation plan for the curriculum. She’s also bringing in top music theory and music psychology scholars to advise the department on the process.

“�ֲ���ý is one of the only places I know of that’s purposely trying to infuse music cognition into its music theory curriculum.”

“We chose Janet,” says Parakilas, “because she comes out of a program at Northwestern that’s one of the leading music theory programs with that cognitive perspective” — as well as one of the very few programs in the field. “Her work impressed us.”

For the Music Theory II course, Fergus Scott ’17 adapted Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” (Jepsen-Ramsay-Crowe) to an 18th-century keyboard style.

Bourne is one of the relatively rare scholars who approach music cognition from the discipline of music, rather than psychology or neuroscience — which makes her a good fit for �ֲ���ý because, as she says, “�ֲ���ý is one of the only places I know of that’s purposely trying to infuse music cognition into its music theory curriculum.”

In her own research, Bourne focuses on patterns in music, how those patterns constitute musical conventions (think of the guitar introductions to “Oh, Pretty Woman,” the Beatles’ “Day Tripper,” and the Temptations’ “My Girl”), how those conventions relate to conventional patterns in language — and how our minds categorize both types of convention.

Students sing in an improvisation exercise in a Music Theory II class on March 30, 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

She also looks at the role of analogy, or the functioning of shared relationships, in our comprehension of music. “There are some cognitive psychologists who would say that analogy is at the core of everything that we do,” Bourne says. But analogy as an element of music cognition hasn’t been deeply explored.

In a recent paper, Bourne argues that “listeners perceive irony in music by making an analogy between music and language — in other words, passages of music that are analogous to passages of ironic language would be perceived as ironic.”

One form of irony in language is to change the meaning of a concept by changing the context in which it’s used. The same applies in music: Imagine a blues song in which the singer’s Christmas is spoiled because his lover left him, and then he quotes “Jingle Bells” in his guitar solo. That’s a lonely one-horse sleigh.

At �ֲ���ý, Music Theory II typically looks at conventions of the 18th century — such as chord progressions, counterpoint, and improvisational tactics — many of which continue to influence today’s music vocabulary. (For one class assignment, students adapted modern pop songs such as the Beatles’ “Girl” or Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe” to an 18th-century keyboard idiom.)

“Our department has always been very forward-looking.”

But, through readings and class projects, Bourne is also explicating not only the musical vocabulary of Mozart’s time, but relevant cognitive practices. “I’m trying to connect this to the reasons that some 18th-century practices are still used,” she says.

Take cadences, those musical gestures that signal the end of a phrase. Bourne’s students heard music theorists’ explanations for the differing experiences of finality produced by different cadences.

But she also had the class read about an experiment that tested how listeners, both musically trained and not, perceived various cadences. “The experiment shows that you don’t need musical training to hear most of the cadences as closing gestures,” Bourne explains.

Janet Bourne, at right, is one of the rare scholars who approach music cognition from the discipline of music, rather than psychology or neuroscience. She is shown with students in a Music Theory II class; from left, Justin Demers ’18 of Nottingham, N.H., Will McPherson ’18 of Berwyn, Penn., and Thai Tran ’19 of Hanoi, Vietnam. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Popularity with students is just one of the arguments supporting a systemic role for cognition in �ֲ���ý’ music theory offering. More objectively, “it makes a better-rounded theory structure,” says Maddie McLean ’17, a double major in biochemistry and music from Hood River, Ore.

“In high school, you’d learn theory and be like, ‘Well, why does that work?’ And the answer was, ‘Because it does.’ And that’s not a great answer.” Studying music from psychological or cognitive angles, she says, “just gives more context.”

Music cognition’s power to connect with other fields is obvious. In last fall’s iteration of “Music and Mind,” Jim Parakilas and his students roamed a range of topics that extended from music therapy to whale song to music and infant development.

Another benefit, says Bill Matthews, pertains — in a keenly liberal-arts manner — to student intellectual development. “This has to do with what’s called metacognition,” he says.

“If you have insight into your own learning processes, if you are constantly aware of how you are learning and how you are processing information, I think it enhances learning —it makes it more efficient, and we can learn more when we’re aware of that.”

Ian Clarkson set The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” (Whitfield-Strong) to an 18th-century idiom.

Bourne’s work with the music theory program, her music department colleagues hope, could be the beginning of a broader infusion of psychology into the department’s curriculum.

“Everyone in the department is interested in this field in their own way,” says Parakilas. “Once you start thinking about this, you think, ‘Well, what about our instrumental instruction?’ ‘What about our musicology courses?’ ‘What about ethnomusicology?'”

“Our department has always been very forward-looking,” says Fatone. “This is an exciting new turn for music to take.”

With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, �ֲ���ý looks forward to advancing broad diversity among its faculty. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

How do students benefit from a college faculty that represents a broad diversity of experiences and perspectives?

Crystal Williams, chief diversity officer at �ֲ���ý College, suggests that one answer lies in an essential role of the teacher. Faculty members ask questions, she says — questions whose answers the professors and students explore together.

Those questions “are inextricably linked to our cultural, social, gendered, racialized selves,” Williams explains. “The more diverse the people are who ask those questions, the more complete, exciting and dynamic the resulting knowledge is.

Crystal Williams, associate vice president and chief diversity officer at �ֲ���ý. (Leah Nash)

“So diversifying the faculty is imperative to ensure that we remain as excellent a faculty in the 21st century as we were in the 20th, and doing so requires that we include as many voices and as many questions as possible.”

�ֲ���ý recently received two grants, totaling more than $1.4 million, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to advance faculty diversity, both on �ֲ���ý’ own campus and as part of a collaborative effort with other institutions. The Mellon Foundation defines diversity broadly, including first-generation college students and those who have overcome adversity to launch a college career.

“These grants position �ֲ���ý to transform its faculty and ensure that we become a leader in the liberal arts sector with regard to faculty diversification,” says Williams.

The five-year, $1 million Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal grant will support a four-part strategy to put more promising candidates from underrepresented groups on the tenure track at �ֲ���ý during the next five years, as well as to build the college’s long-term capacity for recruiting superior faculty from all walks of life.

Emerging as �ֲ���ý anticipates the retirements of a substantial proportion of its current faculty — about a third during the next decade — this initiative explicitly links the recruiting of diverse candidates for tenure-track positions to faculty retirements.

An additional $419,360 comes to �ֲ���ý from Mellon as the college becomes a leadership institution in the Creating Connections Consortium, a national partnership designed to advance faculty diversity. C3 brings together undergrads, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty and administrators to create mentoring and research relationships, and to better prepare young scholars for careers in liberal arts colleges.

Matt Auer, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs at �ֲ���ý. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý is the fourth liberal arts college, and sixth lead institution overall, in C3. It joins Connecticut, Middlebury and Williams colleges and two research institutions, the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University.

Among other initiatives, the consortium provides fellowships intended to give young scholars from underrepresented groups a feel for the possibilities in academe. Undergraduate fellowships support students — three from �ֲ���ý in 2014 and two in 2015 — through a summer of graduate-level studies at Berkeley or Columbia.

A second C3 fellowship program enables postdoctoral fellows, aka “postdocs,” from Columbia and Berkeley to teach and do research at C3’s liberal arts colleges, exposing them to the rewards of working in an academic setting distinctly different from the research university. �ֲ���ý will host two or three postdocs in 2016 and 2017.

“Part of the idea is for us to deepen our understanding about diverse groups of postdocs in particular fields, and have the experience of working with them here,” says Matt Auer, the college’s dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs. “At the same time, another part is to get the postdocs, who are coming from great institutions, to recognize the value of a career at a liberal arts college.”

C3 also holds a yearly summit, a national gathering of students, faculty and leaders of the consortium institutions, that �ֲ���ý will host in November.

Receiving Mellon grants that are “focused right on the bull’s-eye of diversity and inclusiveness,” Auer says, “is very much in keeping with �ֲ���ý’ basic mission, which is to learn from our differences and derive strength from that.”

Eileen Lam ’15 of New York City is shown at Columbia University. A fellowship from the Creating Connections Consortium enabled Lam to spend summer 2014 experiencing graduate-level work at Columbia. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The Mellon Foundation specifically supports initiatives involving the humanities and the “humanistic social sciences” (that is, social and behavioral disciplines that explore the human experience through methods akin to the humanities, rather than the scientific method).

Through these grants, �ֲ���ý seeks to encourage applications from individuals from underrepresented groups including African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders, Asian Americans; first-generation college students; individuals who have followed nontraditional pathways to college owing to exceptional talent and motivation in the face of adversity; and individuals with a demonstrated commitment to incorporating diverse backgrounds and perspectives to learning, scholarship, service and academic leadership.

More about the Mellon Diversity and Faculty Renewal Program

The program will, first, make �ֲ���ý more attractive to strong candidates and, second, better enable existing faculty to find and recruit candidates. Here’s a summary of the four strategies supported by the grant:

• Recruitment of up to six postdocs through one- or two-year postdoctoral teaching and research fellowships attached to tenure-track positions;
• Creation of a Diversity Advocate Team to help build capacity among faculty to more effectively recruit and retain a broadly diverse faculty. This faculty team will undertake programming tailored to subject areas, and will assist or serve on search committees. This element of the program is designed to have an impact across disciplines;
• Outreach and travel to develop recruiting networks through attending appropriate meetings, conferences, etc.;
• A New Scholars Program engaging young academics from underrepresented groups through academic programming at �ֲ���ý, such as dialogues and symposia.

Students benefit from a college faculty that represents a broad diversity of experiences and perspectives. Here, �ֲ���ý junior advisers and residence coordinators participate in a mediation training session in August 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Thanks to the Faculty Diversity and Renewal Program, the college can offer “a postdoctoral experience where they’ll get to know the institution, won’t have as high a teaching load and can get quite a bit of scholarship done, which is hard when you’re in your first couple of years as a tenure-track faculty member,” Auer explains.

These postdocs, he adds, will “experience a superb liberal arts college that takes scholarship seriously — and where students are part of the intellectual environment. Students are collaborators and are steeped in the faculty’s own research. That’s a model that the postdocs will frankly be hard-pressed to find at many research universities.”

The Diversity Advocate Team, meanwhile, will enable departments to become “more strategic in how they think about diversity in their fields, and how they can scout a more diverse candidate pool well in advance of actually trying to recruit those candidates,” Auer says.

“The work of building the faculty should be strategic and aggressive” when it comes to broadly representing humanity, Williams says. “We can no longer just sit back patiently and wait for the applications to come in without regard to best practices in the field.

“If you want an extraordinary faculty comprised of the nation’s most diversely cast thinkers and creators, we have to develop much more active recruitment models. And we have to activate the faculty in new and exciting ways.”

“I can’t wait to see what our faculty looks like in five years,” Williams adds. “What lies ahead of us is incredibly exciting.”

Scholars and human-rights advocates will join survivors of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda to discuss its origins and outcomes on Friday and Saturday, March 30 and 31, at �ֲ���ý College.

Titled Rwanda: From National Disintegration to National Reunification: The Legacy of the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, the conference is open to all free of charge. Sponsors of the event include the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information, please contact Assistant Professor of French Alexandre Dauge-Roth, the event’s organizer, at 207-786-6281.

This interdisciplinary gathering will gather speakers from Rwanda, Europe and the United States, including members of the Rwandan diaspora living in New England. “Envisioned as a place of encounter and relationship-building, it will allow survivors of the genocide of the Tutsi to share stories, struggles and hopes to promote a better understanding of this traumatic legacy,” says Dauge-Roth.

In a prelude to the conference, students in Dauge-Roth’s seminar “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda” will offer posters and performances reflecting their correspondence with genocide survivors at 4:30 p.m. Friday, March 30, in Pettengill Hall. The presentations are part of the Mount David Summit, a celebration of academic achievement at �ֲ���ý.

The conference itself begins with remarks and a reception at 7:45 p.m. Friday in Chase Hall Lounge. It continues with a day of panel discussions in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Classroom (G52) starting at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 31, and concludes with a Rwandan dance performance and remarks at 8 p.m. in Chase Hall. (Click the links for a full conference and a list of .)

The panel presentations will proceed chronologically from a discussion about the origins of the genocide, to eyewitness accounts of the massacre, to an examination of the country’s efforts to rebuild and to effect national reconciliation.

Speakers include faculty in diverse disciplines from �ֲ���ý, Bowdoin and Colby colleges and the University of Paris; experts on the genocide including a Human Rights Watch specialist on Rwanda, a Rwandan national prosecutor and the director of the Refugee and Immigration Services at Catholic Charities Maine; and survivors including founding members of an association for the genocide’s widows and children, and two authors who bear witness to the massacres in their works.

The event takes place about a week before the 13th anniversary of a genocide whose scale and ferocity stunned the world. As Dauge-Roth points out, 2007 is midway through the timeline for the Rwanda government’s Vision 2020, a program, devised in the wake of the tragedy, for the impoverished nation’s reconciliation, reconstruction and economic revitalization.

“We are 13 years after the genocide and 13 years before 2020,” Dauge-Roth says. “So it’s also a moment where we can learn, evaluate and reflect on what has been accomplished and consider what the challenges are in the longer term.”

Dauge-Roth, a Swiss native who started at �ֲ���ý in 2005, organized the conference as an extension of his own research into the Rwandan genocide. He is exploring the personal, literary and film narratives created about Rwanda in the years since Hutu extremists massacred as many as a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu.

“I’m examining how these authors use an aesthetic of haunting,” he says. “These testimonies and documentaries find ways to haunt the reader and the viewer, so that we cannot go back to our usual business and forget about it.”

During a 2006 trip to Rwanda, Dauge-Roth established a network of genocide survivors who have corresponded with �ֲ���ý students in this winter’s “Documenting the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda” seminar. (French is an official language of Rwanda.)

“I hope that students will reflect on what it means to listen to a survivor,” says Dauge-Roth. “There’s a lot to learn from them about the ability to struggle and to live on despite horrific loss.”

Several speakers from the �ֲ���ý event will also take part in similar panels at Harvard University (5-7 p.m. March 27, Tsai Auditorium, South Building, S010), at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. (4-6 p.m. March 28, Hogan Campus Center, Room 519) and at the University of Colorado at Boulder (April 3).

“My hope is that these conferences will be a key step to building personal relationships with Rwandan community partners for future projects,” Dauge-Roth says.

Colby, �ֲ���ý and Bowdoin colleges have received a $280,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to build a model program for the collaborative development of library collections. The plan is to share collection resources in all formats, electronic and print, reduce unnecessary duplication and redundant purchases, and make a broader universe of materials available at each campus.

Previous grants from the to the three schools, which are collectively called “CBB,” have helped build a service framework for collection sharing, enabling the libraries to develop technologies to share catalogs and support interlibrary loan activity.

The goals of the current project will bring collaboration among the three libraries to the next level. The libraries plan to determine how to expand the collection of materials available to the CBB academic communities, share budgetary and space resources so that all three libraries can operate more cost-effectively, and build a faculty culture that embraces the plan.

“CBB libraries have established a distinguished track record of resource-sharing,” notes Gene Wiemers, vice president for at �ֲ���ý College. “We recognize the strategic advantage to three small colleges to combine the strengths of our research collections. This project gives us the resources to plan and shape our collections to make our libraries meet even more of our needs.”

The grant will be used over two years to hire two temporary librarians who will enable current staff to devote time to the project.

“We need the time,” says Bowdoin College Librarian Sherrie Bergman. “We need the project work to be conducted by librarians who have established collegial relations with faculty members and who are knowledgeable about the research and curricular needs of our faculty and students.”

The CBB librarians are identifying areas of historical curricular and collection strength for each school and each college. Four pilot curricular areas are being selected to begin the project, which ultimately will span all disciplinary areas and all subject areas of the collections. The pilot areas will be among those that are taught at all three schools, place budgetary pressures on their respective libraries, and are interdisciplinary in nature.

The libraries are using software tools to analyze areas of collection strength and overlap, measured against current and projected curricular needs. The tools offer collection comparisons on such parameters as collection age, format and past circulation. The data analysis will support development of new approaches to collection development, weeding, cancellation, print archiving and preservation activities.

The libraries will be working in new ways with vendors for the acquisition of new materials. They will develop joint monographic approval plans with the goal of acquiring a larger number of unique book titles, and test new models for the development of shared journal and electronic book collections.

Because collection-building strategies differ among the disciplines, librarians will consult closely with academic departments and individual faculty members on the three campuses. They will discuss curricular concentrations and collection strengths, overlaps and gaps to achieve increased collection breadth at each school. Space limitations at each library make it logical also to consider cooperative de-accessioning, print archiving and off-site storage agreements.

In the second year of the grant, the model book approval plan will be extended to all appropriate subject areas, and the libraries will write a joint collection management document that presents the strategic vision for a shared collection plan. They also will review benchmark data to measure the success of the new model plan to bring more unique materials to each school.

Project librarians say the enthusiasm and high satisfaction with resource-sharing among faculty and students make the collaboration possible. Results of the project will be widely disseminated among the library community with the hope that the CBB partnership can serve as a model for other library collaborations.