In its second year, the Kenan-Biddle Partnership has seen a significant drop in interest.
The program, which encourages collaboration between UNC and Duke University through grants of $5,000 each, attracted about 50 applicants this year. Last year, the project received about 90 grant proposals.
But organizers said the 10 projects chosen from this year’s pool feature the same level of diversity the project seeks to attract.
Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs at Duke, said this year’s applicants suit the project’s narrow purpose better than last year’s.
“They were more consistent with this particular branch’s purpose and appropriate to this grant,” he said.
Carol Tresolini, vice provost for academic initiatives at UNC, is one of the leaders of the partnership. She said the proposals cover themes such as humanities, sciences and community service.
Recipient Allison Mathews, a co-organizer for the Triangle Race Conference, is a fifth-year doctoral student studying sociology.
Mathews said after she saw last year’s announcement for Kenan-Biddle applications, she became interested in helping Duke and UNC’s sociology departments work together.
The project seeks to build relationships between Duke and UNC and encourage collaborative research on ethnicity and race, Mathews said.
