Mount Vernon Presbyterian School Awarded $500,000 Grant

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Recognized across the world for its comprehensive design thinking program, Mount Vernon Presbyterian School has been awarded a $500,000 grant by the Goizueta Foundation.

In partnership with the foundation, Mount Vernon will accelerate the development and expansion of iDesign. As a school of inquiry, innovation, and impact, the school launched its design thinking program in 2009.

Developed by Stanford University’s Institute of Design (better known as the d.school), design thinking is the cornerstone of Mount Vernon’s program of study. By identifying real world issues, collaborating through research, testing results, and prototyping solutions, Mount Vernon students make a lasting impact in the world.

Over the next three years the $500,000 grant will support the expansion of Mount Vernon’s iDesign program through:

• constructing and equipping an iDesign studio on the school’s Glenn Campus (supporting grades 7-12);
• supporting the salary and benefits of Mount Vernon’s Director of Design & Engineering Programs;
• engaging internal and external experts as consultants and for faculty professional development;
• supporting Mount Vernon’s iDiploma program; and
• accelerating faculty action research projects.

“Receiving the generous support of the Goizueta Foundation affirms our belief in the power of design thinking to accelerate learning,” said Head of School, Dr. Brett Jacobsen. “It also allows our teachers and students to go deeper in discovering how might they solve many of the world’s most pressing problems.”

Specifically the grant awarded to Mount Vernon is an extension of Goizueta’s GoSTEAM (Goizueta + STEAM) initiative, focused primarily on inspiring and promising STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) programs in schools. The Goizueta Foundation seeks to positively impact the academic success of students by partnering with high-performing independent schools and large-scale organizations working within school systems.

This investment will enable Mount Vernon to deeply integrate disciplines, achieve a more collaborative “team teaching” model, align intellectual leadership and direction across divisions, expand Mount Vernon’s capacity to research, design, and scale innovative curriculum, and infuse agency in its students for making positive change through experimentation and scientific discovery.

Prior to this recent award, the Goizueta Foundation generously supported Mount Vernon by awarding financial aid funding through an endowment to provide access to families seeking a MVPS education for their students.

The Goizueta Foundation is a private, general-purpose, grantmaking philanthropy that since its inception, has partnered with more than 85 organizations through 555 grants, totaling more than $386 million.

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