The National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.3 million grant to Mills College in Oakland, Calif., to help that city’s public schools strengthen the participation of girls and minority-group members in mathematics and science programs.
The grant will establish a new Leadership Institute for Teaching Elementary Science in Oakland, which will aim to help the district’s 1,050 elementary school teachers learn creative techniques for teaching math and science.
The project will also select 180 elementary teachers to receive special training to serve as “leader teachers.’'
This group will then go on to train colleagues at their own schools.
The board of the Pew Charitable Trusts has appointed Rebecca W. Rimel to the position of president and chief executive officer.
Ms. Rimel, who currently serves as the Philadelphia-based foundation’s executive director, will take over from the current president, Dr. Thomas Langfitt, on Jan. 1, when Dr. Langfitt becomes the chairman of the Glenmede Corporation, the Pew Trusts’ parent corporation.
Ms. Rimel has worked for the Pew Charitable Trusts since 1983, starting as manager of its health programs and later serving as vice president of three of its grantmaking programs.
In another appointment in the philanthropy world, Susan B. Badger has been named president of the Marin Education Fund in San Rafael, Calif.
Ms. Badger, currently the education-program officer of the San Francisco-based James Irvine Foundation, is moving to the Marin Education Fund this week.
Ms. Badger has served as the program chair of Grantmakers for Children, Youth, and Families, a coalition of national philanthropic leaders that is a subgroup of the Council on Foundations.
The Marin Education Fund awards grants to individual children and adults in Marin County to pay for child care, youth programs, undergraduate study, fifth-year teaching credentials, vocational training, and language instruction.
Meanwhile, another foundation in the Golden State, the California Wellness Foundation, has announced the appointment of Gary D. Nelson to the position of program officer.
Mr. Nelson, previously an associate director in the cancer-prevention and -control division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, will now oversee the Wellness Foundation’s grantmaking activities in the areas of adolescent health and school-linked services.--M.S.
