PROVIDENCE – The Moses Brown School had much to celebrate this week as it announced two anonymous gifts totaling $2.1 million and a coalition with Brown University to launch its new Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation program – according to a Tuesday release by the Providence-based independent Quaker school.
“It’s affirming for us to have collaborators like Brown to help ensure that our programs remain highly relevant in the real world,” said head of school Matt Glendinning in prepared remarks. “MB aims to provide students with world-class learning opportunities. This is part of our promise as a 233-year-old Quaker school: to remain true to our time-tested values and philosophy, even while we renew our programs and facilities for the 21st century.”
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The gift will completely fund the new Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation curriculum which aims to instruct students in how to apply a business mindset to social change through real-world experience. Program components for juniors and seniors will be jointly run with Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service.
“Brown is excited to see Moses Brown adapt what we’ve been doing to a high school audience. We need leaders who are equipped and ready to look at the problems around them and take them on as their own,” said Alan Harlam, Swearer Center director of social innovation, in a statement.
In addition, the school made public a second gift. Also anonymous, this $1.1 million gift was made in support of the scholarship fund.
In its “Open Access” fundraising initiative, which aims to diversify the student body, the school hopes to raise $15 million in new scholarship funding. The gift announced Tuesday brings their current total to $6 million.
However, $100,000 of the $1.1 million gift will benefit the Y-Lab, a 5,000 sq. foot maker lab and engineering lab located in the school’s 150-year-old Alumni Hall.
In this space, named for 18th century Quaker scientist Thomas Young and designed by Durkee, Brown, Viveiros, and Werenfels of Providence, students will be able to delve into project-based learning in 3-D fabrication, coding and rapid prototyping. It will be home to 3-D printers, two CNC mills, a laser cutter, vinyl cutter, large-format plotter-scanner, wire bender, media room for video production and state-of-the-art robotics lab.
The Y-Lab will be managed by David Husted, a 1986 Moses Brown alumnus and the school’s first-ever director of innovation and design.
Emily Gowdey-Backus is a staff writer for PBN. You can follow her on Twitter @FlashGowdey.
