The College's Women in Science Project recently received the largest grant in its three-year history, $300,784 over five years from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The money will help support and expand the program, which encourages women to pursue interests in science.
"The Sloan grant comes to us at a very critical juncture in the program," said the program's director, Mary Pavone. "It will allow us to sustain initiatives that have already met with great success and, at the same time, to address related needs and explore new ways to recruit and retain women science majors."
The project currently has paid research internships for freshmen, a peer mentoring program and science seminars and discussions, she said.
Approximately $75,000 of the grant will be given to the project the first year, Pavone said. The money will be dispersed within the organization to cover administrative costs and also to institute some new programs, she said.
Pavone said the project will put into place a peer mentoring program for upperclass students. "We really didn't give them enough guidance and support," she said.
Money will also go toward faculty development seminars, study groups and project evaluation and dissemination.
Pavone said program organizers will look at how the project can be "packaged and disseminated to others."
She said the program is a "very replicable project" and can be used at other colleges and universities.
The project has already received more than $600,000 in external support, according to a press release.
"We are looking to moderately expand in the future," Pavone said. "We want to improve what we have been doing."
Pavone said groups will be allocated $14,000 to train women to be study group leaders. Currently, there are more men than women who work as leaders in the Academic Skills Center, she said.
The College helped start the program in 1990 with College funding. According to Pavone, the College has committed $50,000 annually to the project, but that amount only partially supports the program.
The project has received numerous grants, including funding from the National Science Foundation. The Montgomery Foundation, Hewlett-Packard, International Business Machines and Union Carbide also gave money, Pavone said.
"What I want to do is not only to increase numbers" of students involved in the program, she said. "I want to know how to better reach students and find out what their needs are."
