Davis Foundation Grant Enables Trinity Newsroom Expansion

Davis Foundation Grant Enables Trinity Newsroom Expansion

Trinity Washington University president, Patricia McGuire, announces that the University is the recipient of a $600,000 grant from the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee, "to expand our work on the Newsroom and development of student talents in Journalism and Storytelling across all majors."

President McGuire writes to the Trinity Community, "[t]his grant is a result of the hard work and excellence of Mr. Chaz Muth and the team of students who have worked with him thus far in the Newsroom, and our colleague [Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations] Barbara Goliday who has done a masterful job stewarding the prior grants of the Davis Foundation and cultivating the Foundation for this new gift."

"I am deeply grateful to the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation for their transformational investment in Trinity and our students," says Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, Barbara Goliday.

"With this grant, the foundation has invested a combined total of $1 million to ensure our students, regardless of major, are receiving hands-on experience reporting newsworthy stories through online articles, video, photography and podcast. I received my undergraduate degree in journalism, so being a part of the team that makes this happen for our students is pretty special."

This newest grant from the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee is set to support student scholarships and internships, support faculty participation in the Newsroom, and support the ongoing equipment and infrastructure needs of the programs supported in the Newsroom. It comes at a pivotal time in the history of American journalism.

"Unfortunately, newsrooms across America still have a real problem when it comes to hiring journalists of color," says Dr. Jamal Watson, associate dean of the School of Professional and Graduate Studies and the director of Trinity's Strategic Communication and Public Relations Program. "Too often, they claim that they cannot find exceptional young journalists of color. No longer can they hide behind this excuse. The Trinity Times is training and preparing a new generation of journalists-particularly women of color-to help diversify the profession."

Watson says that the grant from the Davis Foundation will continue to allow the university to "marry theory with practice" and help Trinity's student journalist not only hone the craft, but to secure high-quality reporting jobs once they graduate.

Previously, the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee awarded two grants to Trinity totaling $400,000 to create the Newsroom and Journalism program, relaunching the Trinity Times as an twenty-first century exemplar collegiate publication, and some of that amount is now creating a studio for audio/video production.

"Representatives of Bank of America, which manages the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, contacted Trinity several years ago about investing in our students and the journalism program here, with a special interest in developing the pipeline for our very diverse population of students to enter careers where journalism an communication talents are valued," says President McGuire

Under the stewardship of Chaz Muth, an award-winning journalist who comes to Trinity from the Catholic News Service, the Newsroom has become a pivotal touchpoint for students from all academic disciplines, with the Trinity Times serving as a vital outlet and voice for our campus community.

"I'm so grateful to the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation for this most generous gift, which is going to go a long way in our mission to help Trinity students from many different disciplines develop their storytelling skills in multiple ways," Muth says.

"There are so many people at Trinity who fostered the relationship with the Davis Foundation, including Dr. Jamal Watson, Patrick Kellogg, President Patricia McGuire and most notably Barbara Goliday, to let them know the mission of our university. This grant and the previous funding wouldn't have been possible without them. Our students will not only learn how to write informative and completing articles, they'll learn how to tell their stories through video, podcasts, photography and broadcast. While the newsroom and studio serves our Communications and Journalism and Media Studies majors, it's also open to students in every major at Trinity in developing storytelling skills that serve many careers beyond journalism."

"I have been so impressed with the quality of the work of our student reporters and I look forward to the expansion of the news services including video and audio in the year ahead," President McGuire writes, "[and I look] forward to hearing more about the new grant and support for the work of our students and faculty."

Evelyn Y. Davis, born in 1929, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, was a pioneering financial journalist and an iconic figure in shareholder activism. A Holocaust survivor, Evelyn had a challenging childhood marked by the traumatic experiences of World War II. Davis's family was part Jewish, which placed them in grave danger during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. She and her family were arrested by the Nazis in Amsterdam during the final months of the war. This early adversity left a significant impact on her life and likely shaped her formidable character as a corporate activist later on.

Known for her no-nonsense approach at shareholder meetings, she owned stocks in over 80 corporations and was fearless in confronting corporate executives to hold them accountable. For five decades, she was the editor and publisher of the investor newsletter "Highlights and Lowlights," through which she influenced corporate governance significantly. Davis, who passed away in 2018, also left a substantial philanthropic legacy, contributing generously to journalism and the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, from which Trinity has benefited greatly.

Trinity is a comprehensive university offering a broad range of educational programs that prepare students across the lifespan for the intellectual, ethical and spiritual dimensions of contemporary work, civic and family life. Founded in 1897 as Trinity College in Northeast Washington, D.C. by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Trinity was the nation's first Catholic liberal arts college for women. Trinity became Trinity Washington University in 2004, and today enrolls more than 2,000 students in three academic schools: College of Arts and Sciences (Trinity's undergraduate liberal arts college for women), School of Nursing and Health Professions and School of Professional and Graduate Studies.

Trinity enrolls more D.C. residents and more graduates of D.C. Public Schools than any other private university in the city. Trinity's student body is 55% Black and 30% Hispanic. Trinity is one of only three private institutions of higher education to have U.S. Department of Education classification as both a Predominantly Black and Hispanic Serving Institution. About 70% of the undergraduate students are eligible for Pell Grants, and about 10% of the undergraduate women are Dreamers, undocumented students with DACA status. About 5% of Trinity students are men enrolled in coed programs in the graduate and professional schools.

Trinity has gained prominence in recent years for success in the education of low-income students of color, and has received recognition for this work including the Carnegie Corporation Award for Academic Excellence, grants from the Mellon Foundation, and a major grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for the development of curricula and pedagogy to advance more women of color in the sciences. Trinity has also received significant grants from the Clark Foundation, Cafritz Foundation, Sloan Foundation and other major funders.

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See also: Trinity Times wins six awards from the Catholic Media Association.

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