WEGE FOUNDATION GRANT SUPPORTS
ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS AT MTU
HOUGHTON--The Wege Foundation of Grand Rapids has given $180,000 to Michigan Tech to enhance the University's environmental outreach programs. Specifically, the grant is aimed at funding programs to develop future citizen scientists, community leaders, and environmentally committed professionals.
Joan Chadde, education program coordinator of Michigan Tech's Center for Science and Environmental Outreach and recipient of the grant, said the funds will be used to support a variety of educational efforts, ranging from classroom presentations and family science nights at elementary schools to summer environmental education field trips, Earth Week programs for K-12 students and new K-12 teacher workshops in environmental sciences. She said the Wege grant will also be used to support professional presentations at scientific education conferences at the State, regional, and national levels.
Dick Robbins, national chairman of Michigan Tech's Leaders for Innovation Campaign, said the grant will enable the University to significantly increase its environmental outreach programs. "We're very grateful to receive this kind of support from the Wege Foundation," said Robbins. "This gift will provide an important impetus in our efforts to achieve the goals of the University's environmental initiative and will provide incentive for other friends to contribute to our capital campaign effort." Michigan Tech's Leaders for Innovation Campaign intends to raise at least $100 million for the University by 2003. Featured objectives of the campaign include investing in faculty, staff and students, and programs in innovation, leadership, and quality.
Peter Melvin Wege established the Wege Foundation in 1967 with the simple credo "Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the people you can, just as long as you can." The Foundation has worked to create initiatives and support innovative work that reflects its founder's passionate conviction that "Education is the key to our survival as a civilization. As evolved humans, we must provide the brain power, technology, and new ways of thinking to save both our human and natural resources."
Peter Wege's father, Peter Martin Wege, was no stranger to new ways of thinking. In 1912, as holder of several patents for innovative metalworking ideas, he founded the Metal Office Furniture Company in Grand Rapids, an enterprise that grew to become the largest office furniture manufacturing company in the world, known today as Steelcase.
The younger Wege's motivating principles include a commitment to education, an interest in the community building power of arts and culture, a profound dedication to the global environment, and a sense of the needs of a healthy community, particularly the importance of high quality health care.
"The key to our survival as a species," he says, "is to start now by teaching our young what must be taught to save our world."
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09/16/99