I thought this bit of good news might cheer you during this week of such bad economic news! In August the School requested support from the Research Universities and Humanistic Scholarship Program of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in the amount of $1 million, $500,000 to increase the existing endowment for pre-doctoral fellowships and $500,000 to endow the School’s core academic program. We emphasized to the Foundation that our intention is to use the funding for fellowships and the academic program to augment the stipends and cover the increasing costs of housing and feeding fellows, as well as to keep up with the rising costs of the School trips.  I am very pleased to report that this grant has been successful – a check for $1 million has just been received from the Mellon Foundation. Quoting from the application, “The ASCSA academic program is unique among international research centers, providing a rigorous curriculum-driven approach which capitalizes on the access to the material culture available in Greece. Today, this program attracts the best students from the top universities in the United States and has trained leading scholars at every major North American academic institution, as well as professionals who have gone on to distinguished careers in other fields. A grant from the Mellon Foundation will ensure that the core academic program will continue to serve future generation of classicists, historians, archaeologists, art historians, and those in other humanistic disciplines.” “A major grant from the Mellon Foundation would also provide critical leverage to allow us to raise additional funding from both institutional and individual sources for fellowship endowment (minimum needed of $2 million), as well as to increase the endowment for the core academic program (minimum needed of $1 million). With the help of the Mellon Foundation the School hopes, over the course of the next three years, to secure the future of its outstanding academic program and the fellowships that allow graduate students to attend the American School.” We are all grateful to Minna Lee and Irene Romano who wrote this proposal and to Trustees James McCredie, Mary Pat McPherson, and Hunter Rawlings who gave very welcome guidance. Congratulations to all! With best wishes, Mary Sturgeon, Chair, Managing Committee