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Literacy Grants
The Literacy Grants program was initiated to mobilize members and resources of Phi Kappa Phi and the higher education community to champion literacy initiatives. Grants of up to $2,500 are available to Phi Kappa Phi chapters and individual members to fund ongoing literacy projects or to create new initiatives. The Society's commitment to the cause of literacy grows out of and is consistent with its mission, which was expanded to include "…and to engage the community of scholars in service to others."
2011 Literacy Grant Winners
J. Alan Alewine, Ph.D., McKendree University |
The goal of this project is promoting academic achievement in a rural school through the use of health and wellness literacy activity kits. The project will involve two groups of students, majors in education and majors in health promotion and wellness, who will be working together to create health and wellness literacy kits comprised of original children’s books, handbooks, and activity boxes that are focused on promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors. After creating the materials, students will go into the classrooms to read books and introduce the activities. The kits will provide materials for teachers to use in the classroom and for students to take home to encourage their families to learn about and participate in the featured health-promoting behaviors. |
Mary Ambery, Southeast Missouri State University |
“Born to Read” promotes early literacy through distribution of books to newborns at two area hospitals. Southeast Missouri State University Phi Kappa Phi members, university administrators, and students prepare the books for delivery by including a Society bookplate and a letter about the importance of reading to babies. Special events publicize the program. Read more about Born to Read here. |
Amelia Baum, The Ohio State University |
In this program, entitled "School Transformation Project: Nicaragua," participants will travel to support a donation-funded K-12 school, located in the small town of Condega, Nicaragua, called Denis Caceres Olivial "El Renuevo." Spending a week there teaching the children, and with the support from Phi Kappa Phi, the goal is to transform the school’s small book area into a real library. This transformation will include providing furniture, books (including Spanish and bilingual Spanish-English books), and educational DVDs for the library, and basic classroom materials and textbooks for the teachers, who are very limited in their available supplies. |
Mary Pat Dodson, San Jose State University |
In-Home Daycare Outreach – Glendora Public Library and Azusa Pacific University partner to deliver early literacy story times to preschoolers attending local in-home daycares. APU’s Children’s Literature Professors welcome Glendora Public Library’s Literacy Coordinator and Senior Librarian of Youth Services to their classes to educate students on best practices for story time delivery. University students, who provide the story times to the in-home daycares, use story time scripts and materials prepared by library personnel to model emergent literacy best practices for daycare providers while engaging the children in enjoying books and early literacy activities. The children continue to experience reading and playing with the story time books and materials until the next story time, when a box of fresh materials is delivered. Through this program, the team hopes to promote a lifelong love of reading and learning. Hearing a child shout out "The library is here!" shows that it’s working.
In-Home Daycare Outreach begins its fifth year this fall. With Phi Kappa Phi’s support, the In-Home Daycare Outreach team will replace “well-loved” books and literacy manipulatives in the story time boxes. |
Mary Katherine Duncan, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania |
Literacy Play is one component of a larger initiative to expand Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania’s recently established toy lending library and play resource center. The library makes available literacy and play resources to support and enhance interactions with individuals of all developmental ages and abilities. Inspired by Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences as well as his individualistic and pluralistic views on education, Chapter 202 will use funds granted by Phi Kappa Phi’s Literacy Award competition to create alphabet literacy kits. These kits will be used to teach young children early literacy skills by drawing on their linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic forms of intelligence. In addition, binders announcing the availability of the alphabet literacy kits and detailing alphabet learning activities related to each of Gardner’s eight forms of intelligence will be distributed to area preschool, daycare, early intervention, and kindergarten programs. Read more about the BU Toy Library here. |
Ndona Hansen, Flandreau Indian School |
Graphic Novel For Literacy: Phi Kappa Phi funds will provide Flandreau Indian School with needed funds to purchase graphic novels in an effort to promote literacy. Flandreau Indian School is a Bureau of Indian Education operated school where many students read below grade level. Each day, for twenty minutes, students are involved in Monitoring Independent Reading Practice or MIRP. It is often hard to find literature of interest to, and written for adolescent struggling readers. Individual teachers have found in the past that these students respond well to graphic novels. The funds provided by Phi Kappa Phi will serve to purchase a variety of graphic novels to be used not only during MIRP, but also during core content classes—as graphic novels come in as many genres as chapter books. This project will hopefully spur school administrators to officially make graphic novels parts of the library-required inventory. Graphic novels have taught many students that reading can be fun. |
Paulette Harris, Augusta State University |
The Augusta State University (ASU) Literacy Center located in Augusta, Georgia will use Phi Kappa Phi literacy grant funds to expand the ASU Literacy Center tutoring components to include a new literacy initiative entitled “Extra! Extra! Read All About It!” The initiative will consist of diagnostic and prescriptive measures using Scholastic’s “Read About” software selected specifically because of its proven record of building students’ comprehension skills, content area knowledge and vocabulary. These literacy skills are needed to prepare tutees with special needs for passing the Georgia mandated Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT). |
Bethany Hill-Anderson, McKendree University |
Bearcat Packs are being assembled by Phi Kappa Phi members and Education majors for distribution to McKendree University’s first-generation students and their families. The packs include books and materials to educate and inspire students who are the “first in the family” to attend a 4-year university. The materials will also serve to inform and involve parents of our first-generation students about the culture, language, and practices of higher education. Additionally, the efforts of Phi Kappa Phi members will help foster awareness of challenges first-generation students often face in college and promote awareness of programs to help all students overcome such challenges.
The Bearcat Packs, along with McKendree’s First-Generation Student Success programs are part of an institution-wide effort to promote retention and graduation of first-generation students. McKendree’s First-Generation Student Success office and programs are funded in part by a grant from the Council of Independent Colleges and the Walmart Foundation and the CIC/Walmart College Success Awards. |
Janet Hurlbert, Lycoming College |
The Lycoming College chapter of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi will support a reading and computer literacy project that formalizes the college’s relationship with an after-school program held at the Salvation Army located a few blocks from campus. Grant money will be used to purchase color eReaders and a selection of juvenile eBooks. Reading activities will be included in the Salvation Army Learning Center’s programming, with Lycoming College students involved in the AmeriCorps Community Fellows program tutoring and mentoring the children in the program.
The overarching goal of this Salvation Army after-school program is to prepare children for a successful future by instilling a life-long love of learning. These goals match perfectly with the mission of Phi Kappa Phi and hopefully will become a seed program that can attract more funding and volunteerism.
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Patrick Michael Kilbane, University of Toledo |
The University of Toledo Phi Kappa Phi chapter partners with the West Toledo Kiwanis and their student affiliate, UT Circle K, to donate age-appropriate books to nearly 300 emergent readers enrolled in local Head Start and YMCA pre-school programs. Multiple times throughout the year, PKP members read the books with the children and each child takes the books home with a personalized bookplate. These visits, and the presence of the books in the child’s home, help develop crucial literacy skills such as vocabulary acquisition, comprehension, and phonemic awareness. |
Angelika Kraemer, Michigan State University |
“One World, One Day – Increasing Literacy and Cultural Awareness” – The Community Language School at Michigan State University specializes in teaching languages to children and involving college students in community outreach and service learning. With Phi Kappa Phi funds a special program at public libraries in mid- and southeast Michigan will expose young children to different cultures through reading the book “One World, One Day.” Participating children will receive a free copy of the book and additional copies will be donated to participating libraries. The program will provide an engaging and exciting environment in which children can gain appreciation for other cultures while strengthening their literacy skills. |
Peter Larlham, San Diego State University |
The Tanzania Literacy project was initiated by members of the Phi Kappa Phi Chapter 96 in 2009. Together with other organizations at San Diego State University they completed the first phase of the project in 2010 – the installation of a modest library of 6,000 donated books at Mnyakongo Primary School in Kongwa, Tanzania.
The second phase of the project, the purchase of books for the library in Swahili will take place when members travel to the school in June 2011. The Swahili books will complement the donated English language books. The purchase of the Swahili books was funded by a 2011 Phi Kappa Phi Literacy Grant.
In June 2011 a commemorative plaque will be hung in the library. It will read:
"This library was born of a collaboration between Mnyakongo Primary School and members of Phi Kappa Phi Chapter 96 - San Diego State University, USA.
(2010 – 2011)
'Let the love of learning rule humanity.'”
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Dr. Salika Lawrence, William Paterson University of New Jersey |
The Reading Clinic at William Paterson University of New Jersey offers comprehensive one-to-one and small group tutoring, reading intervention, and enrichment services for K-12 students and college freshmen. Support from the Phi Kappa Phi Literacy Grant will be used to establish the SOAR (Scaffold, Optimize Learning, and Achieve Reading Success) program, which will expand services offered through the Reading Clinic. SOAR will provide literacy-themed workshops for parents, purchase resources for struggling adolescent readers, and start a lending library for parents to borrow books they can use at home.
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Travis Martin, Eastern Kentucky University |
The Journal of Military Experience combines the poetry, prose and artwork of veterans, their family members, and individuals working directly with veterans to promote literacy about military life and the return from combat. Members of the Phi Kappa Phi chapter at Eastern Kentucky University, the student veteran organization, EKU Veterans Education and Transition Support, the university’s department of English and Theatre, and the EKU Veterans Affairs office all help to produce the journal to promote awareness and healing within the veteran community.
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Deadlines
- April 1, 2012
