A project examining Emory's racial history got a boost last month in the form of a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation.

The grant to the Transforming Community Project (TCP) - a five-year initiative to examine Emory's racial history - is part of "Difficult Dialogues," the foundation's two-year, nationwide initiative to encourage tolerance and academic freedom on college campuses.

Emory was one of 27 recipient institutions selected from more than 675 preliminary proposals.

Vice President and Deputy to the President Gary Hauk, co-chair of the TCP steering committee, said the TCP proposal presented a "compelling case" for support.

"One of the difficult dialogues that any community tries to undertake in America these days concerns the history of our race relations," Hauk said.

Leslie Harris, associate professor of history and African American studies and chair of African American studies, is Hauk's co-chair and one of the project's founders.

She said high levels of support from people at Emory, particularly in the upper administration, also set TCP apart from other projects vying for grant money.

"The strength of our proposal was that it was something that had already begun and already had support from a lot of people at Emory," she said.

TCP began with a series of four Community Dialogues last semester, three on the main campus and one at Oxford College. The dialogues drew more than 60 participants - faculty, students, staff and alumni - for discussions about Emory's racial climate.

The steering committee has four more similar dialogues planned for the spring semester, as well as a seminar on research techniques and a Founders' Week event about the desegregation era at Emory.

Hauk said TCP has been "operating on the spare time and good graces of many" thus far and that the Ford Foundation grant will fund a variety of activities.

The grant money is intended to go to faculty and students participating in grantee projects, but Harris said it will benefit TCP as a whole by freeing up university funds for administrative support and research by other participants.

Specifically, the Ford Foundation money will allow faculty to do research during the summer and to work on incorporating the project into their curricula. It will also provide fellowships to graduate students doing their own research.

Other funding, Hauk said, comes from the university's central funds dedicated to the implementation of the Strategic Plan. TCP falls under the plan's third theme, "Creating Community - Engaging Society."

Hauk and Harris anticipate receiving research cues from the other schools involved in "Difficult Dialogues." Organizers of the initiative plan to hold regional conferences and a Web-based forum to encourage collaboration among researchers.

Harris said she hopes the inclusiveness of Emory's project will serve as a model for other schools undertaking similar inquiries.

"We're not just looking at faculty-student relationships," Harris said. "We're looking at relationships across the university."

- Administration reporter Susan McMillan can be reached at susan@emorywheel.com.