onating to the Marco Institute
Marco Institute Giving Opportunities
Lectures Fund $2,000-$80,000
The intellectual life of an institution is always enhanced by the presence of visiting speakers, whether from the region, the nation or the larger world. Lectures are also an important means for the University to have a presence in the wider community. A sure sign of an Institute’s quality is the number and quality of the speakers that visit each year. The Marco Institute is fortunate in already having one fully-endowed annual lecture series (the Riggsby lecture) and dedicates a substantial, but not yet sufficient, sum from undesignated funds to attract visiting lecturers in every Marco field, from music to literature to history and religion.
Graduate Research Fellowships $25,000-$100,000
The quality of graduate students most visibly separates top-tier institutions from the rest. Marco attracts top students, but we need more resources to send them to archives to conduct research and to conferences where they will meet other budding scholars, present the results of their work, and thereby become increasingly competitive in the national job market. Marco will award smaller fellowships for conference travel and larger amounts for extended research.
Rare Books and Manuscripts Acquisitions Fund $2,000-$1,000,000
The ability to work with -- read, understand, and explain -- original documents is the hallmark of a well-trained medieval or Renaissance scholar and top programs across the country maintain a fund with which to seek out original documents (manuscripts, charters, wills, early broadsheets) or acquire those that appear on the market. UT is lucky to have excellent facilities to care for such materials and faculty able both to instruct students in the use of these materials and see to their publication and preservation. The Marco Institute plans to establish a fund to allow the ongoing acquisition of manuscripts and other original documents.
Faculty Chair of Byzantine Studies and Eastern Christianity $3,000,000
UT has a fine faculty of active teaching and research scholars working in most areas of medieval and Renaissance studies. Probably the single most important missing link in our capacity to cover the field fully lies in the religious and political history of the eastern Roman empire -- Byzantium, which ruled most of the eastern Mediterranean throughout the European Middle Ages, established the religious traditions that we now know as Greek Orthodox Christianity, and fertilized the Italian Renaissance after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Hodges Library has an excellent collection of the Byzantine materials necessary to attract a top scholar to UT, there are faculty with related interests in several departments, and an endowed chair in Byzantine Studies and Eastern Christianity remains the top priority for hiring new faculty in Marco Institute fields.
To donate to Marco, please go the the UT Gifts & Giving Website. Click the Give Now button, and choose Knoxville in the top field, Arts & Sciences in the second, and Marco-NEH Challenge Grant in the third.