Lilly Endowment gives $100 million

The Lilly Endowment just gave students 100 million more reasons to go to school in Indiana.\nThe Indianapolis-based organization announced a $100 million grant program last week to improve higher education in the state.\nLilly intends these grants to be used for improving faculty at state and private schools and, thus, to attract students with higher grades in an effort to stop Indiana's so-called "brain drain."\n"As with many of our grants, we expect this one to have leveraging effect for colleges and communities," said Gretchen Wolfram, Lilly Endowment communications director. "For a long time now, we've felt some of the more exciting things in the country are happening on college campuses, and we would like Indiana to be on the forefront of those actions."\nThe average salary of professors at Indiana schools is usually lower than at other midwestern schools, Wolfram said, which discourages many from accepting positions at Hoosier colleges.\nThe $100 million has not yet been allocated, leaving it up to the schools to send in proposals for grants. Lilly will not accept any grant proposals from schools until April but is already optimistic.\n"We're just waiting to see what the colleges come up with," Wolfram said. "I'm sure it will be based on their strengths so that they can make them even stronger."\nIU-Bloomington Interim Chancellor Ken Gros Louis said IU will apply for a grant but the details of the plan were not yet known.\nIt is unlikely, however, that any grant IU might receive from Lilly will have an effect on rising tuition or fees, Gros Louis said.\n"I don't know the details yet, of course, but in reading the full plan, I don't think that defraying tuition expenses would fit the guidelines," Gros Louis said.\nSince 1996, the Lilly Endowment has given almost $1 billion to higher education in Indiana, which Lilly says is necessary for the future of the state.\n"I can't stress the importance of higher education in Indiana enough," Wolfram said. "Without it, the future of education, the future of the economy and the future of quality life in Indiana doesn't look very bright. The state needs this right now."\nAt least one state faculty leader is wary of Lilly's latest grant program.\n"I'm a little nervous it could start creating a two-tiered faculty system where you have superstars at one level and everybody else below that," Kizhanipuram Vinodgopal, an IU-Northwest professor and president of the state chapter of the American Association of University Professors told The Associated Press.\n-- Contact senior writer Chris Freiberg at wfreiber@indiana.edu.